Cruising with Pets
by
James Ewing
We’ve all heard the stories – and excuses – at potlucks, sundowners, and beach-front rum shacks throughout the cruising world. This is our wonderful schipperke ‘Bosun’. We found him lost on the streets of Sint Maarten. Great dog once you get used to the barking. Or, This little squirming ball of love is our dear little poopsie ‘Rudder’. No, you don’t often see albino ferrets on boats do you? Or Whoops! Isn’t our kitty ‘Transom’ just a card? Using your Caribe as a scratching post! Yes, we rescued her from behind that Vietnamese restaurant on St. Barts. Or. I’d like you to meet my French Maid ‘Spanker’…. Oops, sorry, that’s the other pet story.
Well, this is not one of those stories. Sure, we cruise with our 22 year-old, one-eyed cockatiel named ‘Scooter’ who spends over an hour a day in the head and exhibits an unseemly fondness for the culinary arts. But ‘Scooter’ plays only a walk-on role in this story. This is the story of ‘Marty’ and ‘Libby’. This is the story of when pets find you.
We were three days, two hours out of Blanquilla heading into to Marigot Bay on French St. Martin. The trip was much more upwind than forecast – aren’t they all? Ann went forward to ready the anchor.
“EEEK!” Came a cry from the bows and I see Ann walking purposefully back to the cockpit.
Now, Ann is a Nurse. An Emergency Room nurse. She’s used to dealing with the aftermaths of car wrecks, gunshots, falling off of mountains – things like that. She can calmly sit there saying things like “Why yes, those are your intestines and aren’t they a healthy pink color?” She can deal with any emergency situation calmly and effectively. She cannot, however, hold much truck with spiders or snakes or anything with more than four or less than two legs.
“There’s a gecko on the cleat.” Ann informs me.
This is not good. Three days in a saltwater bath can’t be healthy. But I say “Cool.” And rush up to the bow. Sure enough, there is a little gecko curled into a tiny reptilian ball and clinging to the cleat with its last milligram of strength using every one of its magical little toes. I gently pluck the diminutive, salt-encrusted descendent of the dinosaurs off the cleat and head for the galley. I flip on the faucet and hose down the partially preserved lizard. I release it on the counter where it licks the fresh water off of both its eyes. Wow, just like in the insurance commercials. It picks itself up on its adhesive pads and vanishes from sight at a startling velocity. Cool.
“So, we have a gecko on board?” The Inquisition is called to order.
“Yeah,” I say. “But they’re considered good luck and they eat bugs.”
“Oh, OK.” I think it was the “eat bugs” part that won her over. “Let’s call it ‘Marty’ after St. Martin.” Once you’ve named it you have to keep it.
Now one of the really fun things about geckos is that they don’t inhabit the same universe as the rest of us. Or they do but the gecko equivalents of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein said “You want to do WHAT?” Thought about it a second and said “Well, OK. Sure.” While your normal run-jump-scurry-swim-fly type pet bases its movements on the Theory of Gravity. Geckos seem to base theirs on the Theory of Paint. I’ve seen ours relaxing quietly upside down on an overhead beam and its tail is resting on that same inverted surface. Cool!
Marty vanished for a week or two, as geckos are seemingly wont to do. We despaired for poor Marty and feared that the extended saline skin peel may have been a bit too much. But then one evening we saw Marty scurry across the cabin top. The next night we saw it running across a bulkhead. It moved a bit too much like a snake for Ann’s total enjoyment, but she liked the “eats bugs” part.
Then the cockroach showed up. I didn’t see it but Ann swore it was The Largest Cockroach in the World. Out came the boric acid and enriched plutonium dust. We never saw the cockroach again but the next time we saw Marty he was looking a little plump.
Every evening we drag Scooter – our bird who plays no real part in this story – and his cage down below for the night. “Oh look.” Said Ann one evening. “It’s Marty. Except it’s smaller, and a different color and almost clear.” Oops. “Look, you can see its cute little heart beating and its little pink intestines. I think we’ll name her ‘Libby’.” Down came the cage and POOF Libby the Transparent Gecko vanishes from sight. Vanishing seems to be something that geckos have developed into a fine art.
So now there are two. Maybe. We never saw them both at the same time. When we see one it always looks like Marty. Sometimes a little smaller than the last time and sometime a little bigger. But never clear. We chalk it up to an optical illusion, sunspots, or something and talk ourselves into there being only one. Until the Birdcage Incident.
It was a dark, as they tend to be, night. I was standing in the dinghy alongside and Ann was bringing Scooter – our bird who plays no real part in this story – below. A chilling scream echoed through the air and I struggled to see below. That kind of scream could only mean one thing – cockroach. But I was wrong. A gecko had begun the trip below affixed to Scooters cage. Most of the way down the gecko decided it was time to leave and executed a non-Einsteinian back flip and landed on Ann’s arm. As her arm flashed repeatedly into view two thoughts raced through my mind: 1) Poor gecko, and 2) I didn’t know arm bones could flex like that. When the gecko hit Ann’s arm it stuck on with its toes. Each one of those toes has a pad that contains thousands of tiny hairs and each one of those hairs has thousands of little hairlets that attach to things using obscure forces at the molecular level. This particular obscure force, the Van der Waals force, I believe, was named for an almost equally obscure Dutchman who lived for a time on the streets of Sint Maarten. This force imparts to the little hairlets stickability in the rough equivalent of the goo that shoots out of Spiderman’s* wrists. Eventually the gecko grew dizzy and dropped off of Ann’s arm and onto the cabin sole. Then, and you may have already guessed this, it vanished.
One morning about a week ago we were awakened by a sound not unlike the tapping of a plastic clothespin on deck. It was, in fact, so much like the tapping of a plastic clothespin that Ann said “Move, I’ve got to go check the towels on the lifelines.” But there, scurrying inverted and dragging its tail along the underside of a deck beam, was the large, plump Marty. Every 10 seconds or so he (we don’t know for sure and moreover don’t want to know how to know for sure) would make a little sound not unlike the tapping of a plastic clothespin on deck. Isn’t that cute. He’s talking to the laundry. Then another quieter sound, NUTTOAPCOD for brevity’s sake, from the corner of the cabin. Oops, we’re back to two. Sure enough there was Libby firmly stuck to the bulkhead and exhibiting no ill effects from Ms. Ann’s Wild Ride. For a few days we saw them puttering around effortlessly at all sorts of improbable orientations to up and down. They would find each other and make their cute little clicking noise not unlike – well you know. We last saw one two nights ago stuck head down at the seam between a deck beam and the cabin top.
Since then, and you may have guessed this, they’ve vanished.
* Spiderman and his goo appear courtesy of Marvel Comics.
