I don’t intend this as a political statement. I am sharing this story simply because it gave me a great laugh and I hope it will do the same for you.
Whether you are Democrat, Republican, Independent or some other political flavor, if you can’t laugh over this, I think you should lighten up a bit. You’ll see the analogies to current situations especially in California.
I had a group of four ladies from a cruise ship out fishing this week and we were having a blast because the fish were enthusiastically in the game. The ladies didn’t have a way to keep the fish, so it was all catch-and-release.
By the day’s end they had caught and released 49 fish and were high-fiving each other.
During the day, out of nowhere, a pelican flew in and came down right next to the boat. It immediately became a nuisance, reaching out to steal fish off of our hooks, even using its beak to bully my passengers.
We had to pull several bass out of its beak and keep the fishing hooks from getting into him. He was persistent and even dangerous to my passengers.
My trusty crew member tried valiantly to keep the nuisance invader away from fish and passengers, by staying in between them and by using the boat brush to hold the bird away while we brought up fish.
If we moved to the other side, so did the bird. There was no good solution.
Finally, the lady fishing nearest the bird and suffering the most from its grabby, greedy ways had a bellyful and yelled at the bird:
“All right you … go back where you came from and quit stealing everything from me. We’re Republicans and that means you have to earn it!”
Thought I was going to die laughing. Everyone on the boat was cracking up (except for the invading bird). Now … anyone who feels we should have killed a fish to feed the bird, I’ll have words with!
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.