How We Ate a Parrot. With this post, the Captain makes his contribution to the expedition chronicle:
I recently remembered a joke about a parrot. A man got a parrot, but it had one flaw: it swore like a trooper. The man tried every possible way to reform it: he deprived it of food and water and covered its cage with a blanket for the whole day—but nothing helped. Then, after yet another outburst from the bird, the man dragged it out of its cage by the neck and shoved it into the freezer. An hour later, he opens it, and there is the parrot, trembling: “Look, mate, I was wrong, I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I’ll never do it again. Just one question: what did the chicken do?”
Anyway, we ate the parrot. Or parrotfish, as they call it in foreign parts. This species of fish is interesting because it can change sex at will, as we read in a book about fish. The craftiest male gathers several females around himself and enjoys their company. But one day, the smartest and largest female in the harem simply becomes a male, and then either drives out the sultan or breaks up the entire harem altogether. Such wonders.
Parrotfish are not the only ones that can pick up a hefty dose of ciguatoxin from coral. It could just as easily be grouper, certain species of trevally, or any of the reef’s diverse fish. And in our bay, even shellfish. They say some special research vessel came here to conduct studies. It sailed away very surprised.
We can’t send a picture of the fish because our internet is limited, so Google it and attach photos in the comments—let posterity know what to beware of.
A postscript from the first mate. And in the photo, the sailor is airborne. Only she and Lada have anything resembling an active social life. The other day, the sailor and our young crew member went over the mountain to the neighbouring bay in search of supplies, and the whole village there already knew about us and was asking after the crew’s health.
The Captain is plotting our route through the Tuamotu Archipelago. Before circumstances delayed us, we had planned to call at five or six atolls, most of them discovered by the Russian expeditions of Krusenstern, Kotzebue, and Lazarev, and bearing a second, Russian name, mostly in honour of great military commanders and high-ranking dignitaries.
Besides that, Andryukha has drawn up a Plan B for hurricane season in case this same delay means we don’t have time to get visas for New Zealand. In that case, we’ll spend the winter in Tuvalu, Tokelau, and the Phoenix Islands. Rather exotic, but we’re still set on New Zealand.
Tomorrow we plan to weigh anchor and make the passage to the main bay of Nuku Hiva. We’ll see how our bodies behave under way. I’m mostly planning to lie down. I can barely even lift my hands to the keyboard.
Guys, thank you for your support in the comments. I don’t think we’ll want any kind of fish at all for a very long time now. Our neighbours at the anchorage spent a year in the Tuamotus and say that, of course, you can ask the locals whether a fish is safe to eat. But even if they say it is, the fish may still turn out to be toxic. That’s why the locals get sick several times. And that’s why they develop a life-threatening form of the illness. The thing is, the toxin is never completely eliminated from the body.
So the Captain and I are different now)) not the people we used to be, even at the level of our molecular composition.