Season 1: 'The Little Island and the Hungry Dog'
Season 1: 'The Little Island and the Hungry Dog'
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Prologue
“Well, call me ‘Baldy’,” the little white bird said to himself as he hopped forward cautiously.
His beady, coal-black eyes were fixed on the sopping, hairy creature panting beneath the coconut tree.
“I’ve never seen your kind in a place like this,” the bird said to the intruder. “Did you fall off a kayak? Take a dive off a schooner without your swimmies?”
The wet canine wagged his tail, slung his bubble gum tongue across the tip of his nose, and then let drop a long, crystalline strand of drool that shone momentarily in the afternoon sunshine.
The bird was about to speak again — something snarky, no doubt — when the dog bounded forward.
“Here we go…,” muttered the bird to himself, before taking another hop, wings spread, and letting a timely gust of wind lift him just above the nose of the breathless canine.
Part 1
I could have eaten that bird for dinner. Really!
You don't believe me, do you? You think I'm just one of those pampered domesticated dogs who can only catch a rubber ball.
Well, you're wrong there. I - I've caught, I've caught a lot of things. For example, I swallowed a bumble bee once. And just last month I ate, like, a whole ant colony that was crawling over a half-eaten sandwich. (Ants are really fast, you know.)
Squirrels?
Well, no, I haven’t caught a squirrel before. But I’ve come suuuu-per, super close. In fact, I would have grabbed him, but I suddenly smelled a half-eaten bag of potato chips near the tree. Sour cream and onion flavor (my favorite — well, after the barbecue and jalapeño variety.)
Mice, you ask? I could easily catch mice but I let old St. Francis, my master’s cat, take care of those cute little things.
[A big gust of wind whips across the little island and Marco pauses to stick his nose in the air.]
No scent of my master.
[Sniffing]
Or old St. Francis, that useless fur.
[More sniffing]
Or my food bowl.
[Marco gives his body a violent shake and clears his nostrils to refocus on the smells around him.]
Food. I’ve got to find something to eat. Something. Anything.
Well, not anything, exactly. The sand, for example, is not of my liking. Too gritty. I took a few bites out of that dune over there. Yuck.
Now, those sea oats — those look… somewhat edible. Maybe?
If you’ve never tried sea oats, I don’t recommend them — even if they’re the only thing on the menu (as they appear to be on this little island in the gulf).
Soon after scarfing down a salad of those salty green and brown stalks, I felt sick to my stomach. It felt like two live mice were staging a fierce footrace inside my belly. They were pulling at each other’s tails, tripping and rolling over one another.
I don’t know which of them ended up winning, but around the time when they finally called it quits, the sea oats came back up and out looking like a tangled mass of sticky seaweed.
(Did that gross you out? My sincere apologies. I always forget that humans find — [Marco is searching his exceptionally well-educated canine mind for the right word] — throw-up unpalatable.)
The fine sheet of water that was sliding up and down the edge of the shoreline eventually dragged my undigested meal back out into the gulf.
But my hunger was still with me, like an unwelcome stranger.
I climbed back up the shore and sank down on the swaying shadow of the coconut tree’s branches.
I rested my head on the ground, using my front paws as pillows. My heavy breathing shifted tiny grains of hot sand.
This was about he coolest spot on the island — though it was a far cry from the vent in my master’s home that always blew crisp cold air on hot summer days.
Poor Master, I thought. She is no doubt worried sick about me. And old St. Francis — perhaps she will say a prayer for me when Master takes her to Mass. (For a cat and a dog, we always got along pretty well.)
I thought back to when I had stomach aches in the past. My master always made me go without food for 24 hours, except for maybe some rice. Then all was better.
The good news: I would be able to self-treat my condition. The bad news: After 24 hours, there would be no round pebbles of crumbly kibble to eat. Hunger, that unwelcome guest, would only become more unruly.
But just as I was falling into a hot, sandy pit of despair (with broken sea shells), I saw the shadow of a flying bird and heard a quiet rustling in the tree branches overhead.
“Have you returned to gloat?” I asked the bird, Baldy1, who settled on a branch that bobbed gently in the breeze.
“Outmaneuvering your lumbering physique is nothing to fluff up my feathers about, so no, I’m not here to gloat,” he replied with a yawn. “I’m here because I feel sorry for you — a domesticated dog marooned on an island with nothing to eat.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need your solace.”
“No, but you might want this coconut.” As the bird said this, he hopped onto one of the two coconuts growing on the tree. “I can knock this one down off the tree, if you’d like.”
I gave his surprisingly kind offer some thought. My food options were extremely limited — even more so since I found that the island’s sea oats did not agree with my stomach.
True, I had yet to try to wade into the shallows and catch a fish, but my traumatic experience at sea — the one that led to me being stranded — discouraged me from venturing back out into the water.
(Yes, yes — I know. You want to know about that traumatic experience that brought me here to the island. Thank you very much for your concern. Really. I know you truly have my best interest at heart. That said, I’m not quite ready to put it into words. In good time, in good time.)
Having made up my mind, I started to answer, but the bird cut me off: “The way I see it, you’re going to have two problems once I free the coconut from the tree. One, it’s likely to bounce and roll right into the ocean. And with the storm that’s coming, the waves are pretty heavy right now. They could take it right out to sea.”
Storm?, I thought to myself. Sure, there are some clouds, I conceded. But nothing that looks too serious.
“And two,” the bird continued, “even if you manage to keep the coconut from rolling into the water, you’ve still got to break the outer skin. Do you think you can manage that?”
I guessed that my chances for cracking open the coconut were about 50-50. But I wasn’t about to let this potential meal — feeble though it may be — slip by.
Even if I had to chew on the outer skin for a whole day, I was determined to reach whatever sustenance awaited me inside.
After all, I’d penetrated many other barriers before — my (forgiving) Master’s Ziplock bags, cereal boxes, low-fat yogurt (yuck!) packaging. This shouldn’t be too much harder, right?
The sun had already set and risen two times, by my count. I was more hungry than I had ever been in my admittedly pampered life.
“I’m ready,” I said, lifting my nose in the air — the thought of a coming storm still circulating in my mind. “Go ahead and knock the coconut off the tree.”
It took Baldy a few minutes to get his feathered body bobbing in just the right way — and with the right amount of force — to free the coconut from the tree.
Unfortunately, I’d stopped to scratch myself just when the blasted fruit plopped on the ground next to me, hit a rock and spun off into the surf.
“Don’t you want to go in and get it?” the bird asked me.
No, I certainly did not, though I struggled to explain to the bird why I was so afraid of the water. “Let’s try the second coconut,” I replied.
“Are you sure? You’ve only got one more chance. There are no more coconuts in the little tree.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
And so Baldy danced atop the second — this time freeing it in only a few seconds.
I was ready and pounced on the thick-skinned fruit like it was a fumbled football.
And like a fumbled football (I know all of this because my Master loves to watch football on Sunday afternoons) it spurted right between my two front paws and went sideways along the shoreline.
Kicking up wet sand and seashells, I pivoted and pounced again only to knock it further away and down a slope so that it was now gently bobbing in shallow water.
Suddenly emboldened, I waded into the water and tried to grab it with my mouth but my teeth just couldn’t get ahold of the coconut’s slick green outer layer. With every bite attempt I pushed it further away and was soon nearly up to my neck in water.
I barely registered that a light rain had begun to fall and was wetting my back — the only part of my body that was still dry.
Reluctantly, I climbed back up the shore and turned to watch the coconut float away like a pirate ship loaded with treasure. The other coconut was even further from shore and was only visible when a wave lifted it in the air as if to taunt me.
A sudden gust of wind swept across the island, and I sheltered next to the coconut tree.
For once, Baldy was quiet and seemed to recognize my growing despair.
Multiple times I walked back down to the water’s edge, hoping to find that the coconuts were somehow finding their way back to the shore, but — no such luck — they were caught in the swirl of the sea and being spun away faster and farther from the island.
“You’ll want to stay as close to the tree as possible when the storm hits,” Baldy said in a quiet voice (for a bird) before spreading his wings and somehow levitating into a current of air that whipped him high above the island.
A minute or so later, he flew by and called to me, saying he would return and check on me after the storm.
Sobered by my failure to catch the coconut, I pretended not to hear him and stared out into the frothing gulf.
Not counting baths (which I hate) and the disaster that beached2 me on this lonely little island, the coming storm left me more wet and waterlogged than I ever remember feeling.
Sure, I’ve been in rainstorms while out on a walk with my master. She’s elderly and walks kind of slow (no offense if you’re a slow-walking human), and so we have found ourselves in our share of rain showers and sudden downpours.
But this…[shudders] — this was something else altogether.
Every gust of wind seemed to topple a mile-high wall of water right on top of me.
The measly, now-coconut-less palm could only shield my nose from the worst of it.
And when the waves of water reached the tree, I had to retreat to the rocks that mark the middle and highest point of the island.
Even then I was battered on every side by the wind and rain. When a particularly strong gust of wind would strike me on my nose, I would whirl around and look for another crevice in which I could shield my face.
I suppose experiencing that storm on the island felt a little like being locked inside a clothes washer — on high spin and cold rinse.
I’ve never had the, um, privilege, but some of my stuffed, plushy animal friends have and they say it’s just terrible. (My master’s ancient, childhood Teddy said his last experience in the washer was especially traumatic.)
The worst part: You think it’s all over; the spinning stops; the water has all drained out of the drum; and then — without a warning — the machine (or in my case the storm) starts up all over again. Another high-efficiency spin turning you round and round. Another jet of cold water blasting you in the eyeballs.
Ah, well… eventually, the storm did subside.
Clouds still lingered, but the setting sun backlit them with refractions of all sorts of pretty colors.
I can’t tell you exactly what the sky looked like, since dogs like me are part color-blind, so you’ll just have to let your imagination run wild.3 I’m just sure it was a terribly beautiful sky.
The night that followed, though — while not my first on the island — would feel like the longest of my life. I was wet. I was super-duper hungry. And, truth be told, I was beginning to miss ole snarky, bossy Baldy.
In fact, I was wondering where he flies off to during storms when I finally collapsed into a deep sleep.
Interlude
When Baldy left the island to take cover before the storm, he flew to his usual haunt — a souvenir shop in a small coastal town favored by many of his fellow gulls.
The storm was, of course, top of mind among the birds. But as Baldy settled onto the edge of the shop’s roof with a chunk of bagel in his mouth, he overheard two birds discussing the strange behavior of a woman who had been seen around town.
“She’ll sit for hours at a picnic table under one of the pavilions — but without a single bite to eat,” said one of the gulls. “She’ll sometimes get up and hand a piece of paper to passing townsfolk. Occasionally she’ll make a phone call. But that’s it.”
“So not even potato chips? Popcorn? An energy bar?” asked the other.
“Nothing. I waited all afternoon, thinking that surely she would eat something and that I could, of course, swoop in and grab my rightful share. But she didn’t even produce a stick of gum.”
“Poor you!” the second bird said as they continued to discuss the woman.
On the morning following the storm, Baldy flew to the pavilion to see if the woman of whom the two birds had spoken had returned. He found a couple of kids cruising in circles on skateboards, but no one else.
For the next two days, at various times, Baldy flew over the pavilion in hopes of spotting her. She never did turn up there, but after his last flyover he spotted a woman that fit the birds’ description pacing along a boardwalk about a mile away. She was holding up a phone and talking.
Baldy swooped down and settled nearby on a wooden post.
“I take it you’re at the beach again, Ms. Mei?” A man’s voice somehow carried with it gentle amusement through the phone’s speaker.
“Yes - yes, I am,” the woman said with a sad chuckle. “Dare I ask…”
“Well, you called me, so you might as well.” After a pause, the man continued: “But no, there’s been no sign of your dog. I’ve asked around, talked to three other park rangers who work the beaches around here, and none of them have seen a golden retriever running around. Of course, people are always bringing their dogs to the beach and letting them off-leash, so it’s sometimes hard to know whether a dog is a stray. But people report these kinds of things, and I think we would know if someone had spotted your dog.”
“I see.”
“But I’ll keep my eyes peeled, ma’am. And I’ve asked the other rangers to do the same. I just may not be calling you with daily updates unless I have something concrete to share, you understand.”
“I do. And thank you.”
“Look, when a dog gets thrown from a boat in rough sea, as I’ve told you, it’s a tough thing to survive. Swimming in a pool or lake is one thing. An ocean or a gulf is another. That’s not to say it’s impossible. Some have managed to float their way to safety. Had a case like that, oh, about ten years ago. And the fact that your dog was not leashed or collared gave him a fighting chance. Less to weigh him down.”
There was a silence on the line, neither person knowing quite how to end the call.
“It’s a little windy today, Ms. Mei - hold tight to that cane of yours when you’re out and about.”
The woman nodded to herself, ended the call, and slipped the phone back into her purse.
Baldy was still perched on the wooden post, not ten feet away.
As he readied to take flight, the woman finally noticed him and followed him with her eyes as he rose up, wings flapping, and caught a wind current that took him high into the air before he swooped down low over a dune covered with tall grass and shrubs.
A few minutes later, as the woman, shuffled down the boardwalk towards the parking lot, Baldy returned carrying a tiny blue flower in his beak. He settled onto the walkway and dropped the flower right in Ms. Mei’s path.
She looked at the bird and smiled a sad smile, whispering “thank you.”
She started to move again but the bird, strangely, did not flee. After a few moments, the woman bent down slowly to pick up the little flower. She studied it before slipping it into her purse.
Only then did Baldy return to the air and fly out over the gulf — all the while holding Ms. Mei’s gaze until he was lost in the mid-morning sunshine.
Part 2
The school of flying fish interrupted a perfectly good afternoon nap.
Admittedly, I’d been taking a lot of naps. I wasn’t in desperate need of sleep. It had been two days since the big storm — two days of napping, sniffing for edibles the storm may have washed onto the island, and, well, scouting for new napping spots, of course.
I still preferred snoozing under the coconut palm (minus the coconuts, of course). But during the storm, I had been forced to retreat to other places of shelter. As it turns out, some of these nooks made for pretty good nap spots.
One afternoon, when the sun was beginning its downward descent, some of the rocky terrain fell into the shade and became cool to the touch — just how I like it. I was tucked into one such sliver of shade when a strange whirring sound caught my attention, followed by a whiff of fish in the air.
When I popped my nose up above the rocks, my canine mind struggled to make sense of what I saw.
I first thought I was looking at birds flying low over the water.
But then, I saw these “birds” dive into the sea and then fly back up out of the water moments later. Their wet bodies glimmered in the sunlight like tiny angels ascending and descending.
Eventually one of these strange creatures crashed onto the shore in front of me and I saw that they were in fact fish — fish with wings.
My canine mind was blown. For a few moments, it didn’t even register that a pop-up all-you-can-eat seafood buffet had landed on the island.
Eventually, I recovered my thinking faculties and proceeded to scarf down the first careless fish that had flown aground while keeping my eyes peeled for others unlucky enough to have inadvertantly vectored in on the island.
In the end, the vast majority of the flying fish dodged the island on their way to wherever flying fish settle down to rest their tired wings.
As for me, my suddenly-full belly drove me right back to napping. The flying fish had brightened my mood considerably. As it turns out, they also fueled my dreams.
I don’t know much about human dreams, but we dogs can dream some wild, scary dreams.
People call them nightmares. I call them napmares because they happen no matter when I’m sleeping, night or day.
My paw is shaking as I type (and re-type — I frequently mash multiple buttons by accident) and try to recall the scariest dreams I have ever had.
Like the one where I race to the kitchen having heard my master pour kibble into my bowl — only to find the bowl empty and my master grinning from ear to ear and asking if I enjoyed my meal.
Then there’s the recurring napmare of me walking into doggy daycare without my collar. The humans and other dogs present pretend not to see me. It’s as if I don’t exist without my collar, without the little metal tag that lists my name and my vaccine status. “I’m Marco!” I bark. “Let me in to see my friends!” But everyone goes about their business, standing at computers or welcoming other dogs, who are promptly marched by handlers into the playroom.
Come to think of it, living on an island with no food would have been a pretty scary dream, too. Better to dream it than to live it, though.
But perhaps being on the island toughened me up to a point that I am now capable of talking about this next napmare. It came after the feast of flying fish. Perhaps my full belly triggered it. Or perhaps seeing fish that could fly planted this dream deep in my psyche.
In this napmare, I was floating in deep space next to a cat wearing a space suit and a fishbowl helmet. The cat was staring at me — you know, one of those spooky stares that freeze you in your tracks. I get the shivers just thinking about it.
Only — and here’s the thing — it wasn’t just any cat. It was old St. Francis, my master’s cat. In the past, I’ve called him useless fur, and — true to his nickname — in this dream he was of no use to me at all.
Though I was frozen by his stare, I was slowly floating away from him into the deep darkness of space. My tether, a leash as it so happens, was floating next to St. Francis like a long spaghetti noodle. With his space mech suit he could have easily grabbed ahold of my leash and kept me close, but he just stayed where he was and stared, occasionally turning on his jetpack to reorient his body in the low gravity.
Over the course of several minutes, our eyes were locked, but St. Francis became smaller and smaller until he was just a shiny white dot in a wide universe of black.
Of course, I tried to call to St. Francis — to remind him of the good ole days, of me stealing his stuffed mouse and hiding it under my bed. But also how I apologized for that misdeed long ago. And for all of my other misdeeds, like stealing his microwaved tuna suppers.
But St. Francis could not hear me inside his fishbowl helmet. Or if he could, he did not respond.
The dream ended suddenly when I felt a shift in gravitational forces and turned to my right only to find the nose of a Prometheus-class ship from my master’s favorite TV show shooting towards me.
It was then, thankfully, that I woke up.
During my next nap, though — to make things even spookier — St. Francis appeared again, this time perched on top of the couch in our master’s home. The cat told me in its feline voice, “You’re still alive because I generously donated one of my nine lives. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Talk about a napmare!
Owing St. Francis my life — that is a scary thing indeed.
I never did have another napmare about old St. Francis. But as the days went on, my hunger returned. So, too, did the melancholy.
What happens when a dog feels gloomy, you ask?
Well, one of the surest ways to make a dog happy is to give him or her a daily routine. When we know roughly how each day will unfold — when each meal will be placed in our bowl, and when we will be deployed on walks to guard the neighborhood — we feel secure and relaxed. Take those routines away, though, and you have a dog that sighs a lot and lets his or her tail sag.
I’d say my master has always been pretty good about giving me a routine. She’d skip a a walk here and there, but for the most part I knew when I was going to eat and when I was going to go to the dog park and when I was going to go on a hike.
On the little island, of course, all this was gone. There were no regular meals. There was no one to pick up my poop with scented, earth-friendly decomposable sacks. No one to give me treats if I sat on command. There was no routine to speak of other than that provided by the sun and the stars.
I did eventually fall into a routine of my own devising, but the big storm and the flying fish had unsettled me and resurfaced in my canine mind the desperation of my situation on the island.
To combat this returning gloom, I mapped out a new hourly circuit around the island to sniff out edibles wherever I could find them.
I had given up on sea oats, of course, but I did occasionally find big sticks (chunks of soggy, saltwater-infused wood) that had washed ashore. These gave me something tasty to chew on — and, sometimes, strange looking crustaceans to eat.
I also regularly spotted crabs — the island’s only native creature, as far as I could tell. I ate the first few I found, but — when they fared only mildly better in my belly than the sea oats — I settled for playing with them. I would chase them, pick them up with my teeth (gently), and then toss them into the water, or into the weeds, with a quick turn of my head.
Because of this, I’m pretty sure the island crabs thought of me as a strange new predator that threatened their very existence. I imagined the academic crabs holding conferences to discuss the latest ethnographic research about my habits. Perhaps some tried to align my sudden arrival with their evolutionary models of island life.
Most, though, would just start running as fast as their eight little legs — plus two pincers — could carry them. This of course made my play dates with the crabs even more fun (for me anyway).
In fact, I was preoccupied with a particularly crafty crab when, lo and behold, way out over the water I saw a seagull, wings spread and riding a roller coaster of an air current. After a few sniffs in the air I became convinced that Baldy was paying me a visit. I hadn't seen him since the big storm.
I admit that my tail wagged rather energetically for the snarky bird.
But then I realized, in those same sniffs, that Baldy wasn’t alone. There was someone — or something — below him on the water. This creature seemed to be propped up on a surfboard riding the crest of a wave.
I didn’t think that Baldy usually hung out with surfer types — although I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe there was another explanation?
So much for a routine day, I thought, as the strange pair closed in on the island.
Gordo, the sea otter, introduced himself with the confidence and flair of an animal that has been pampered by humans (not unlike myself).
“I was a pet, too, you know,” Gordo told me, by way of introduction, bypassing any attempt at formality. (He told me his name only later).
As he spoke, he rode the turquoise surfboard all the way up to the seashell-spotted shoreline before effortlessly sliding off as if he was on a shopping mall escalator.
Was I about to be lectured by a fellow (lost?) pet on needing toughness and courage? Was I dealing with a creature who had grown jaded about his human owners and now wanted nothing to do with civilized society?
I looked for help from Baldy, but as soon as the sea otter had hopped off his surfboard, Baldy fluttered off to pick at crustaceans on some nearby driftwood.
“For several years my job was to go up and down slides at a zoo in south Florida,” Gordo continued. “The kids loved me — that is, until the whale came out. Once they saw Willy, or whatever his name was, I was ignored, no matter how gracefully I glided down the slick blue surface of the slide — or how high my ariels were on a surfboard. I suppose all that rejection just made it easier for me to leave when, during a hurricane — not the most recent one, though that was a doozy — the zoo flooded and I soon found myself swimming in a holding pond outside my habitat. After a brief stay evading capture there, I traversed drainage system to drainage system until I made it to the Gulf coast.”
Gordo paused to breathe in the salty air and feel the breeze on his whiskers.
“That was around the time that Gordo decided to make his way back to the West Coast, where he says he was taken from his family as a baby,” Baldy said, joining the conversation.
“So, um, Gordo, where did you get the surfboard?” I asked, looking behind him at the colorful foam plank he’d crashed into the shore.
“Oh that. I think I nabbed it from a 10-year-old who was quote-unquote surfing with his dad on those tiny Gulf ripples. Can’t even call them waves, really. The surfboard was my getaway car, so to speak. I have no use for it now, so I’ll just leave it here. You’re welcome to it if you want to escape this grubby sand dune.”
“Escape? On that?” I asked.
“Well, not if you like it here. Seems nice, I suppose. But I’m on to bigger and better things. Well, not really. I’m going back home, you see. I’m going to swim my way all the way to California. With the help of sea currents, of course.”
Said Baldy: “I don’t know if our friend Marco will be able to escape on this thing, but parking it here might draw some attention to the island. It could serve as a sort of SOS to para-sailors and airplane pilots. But the main reason Gordo, here, swung by the island is that I convinced him to hunt you up a meal or two before he takes the next ocean current out of these parts.”
Without another word, Gordo slipped into the water and disappeared. Baldy and I hopped onto some large rocks and looked out at the gulf.
“Apparently, Gordo became quite the skilled surfer while living at the zoo,” Baldy said, while stretching his wings and turning into the breeze.
“Impressive,” I replied. “But California? That’s a long way from here.”
“I suppose so, but, the way Gordo talks, it’s the only place he can survive in the wild.”
After about an hour, the sea otter had pulled ashore three big fish, dragging each one up to the big rocks.
I started to bite into the first of them as soon as it arrived, but Baldy gave me the evil eye. So I waited until all three of us had a giant fish before continuing with my meal.
I’m sure the fish would have tasted better fried, but it wasn’t half-bad raw. Even better was the company. For once, I was not alone.
[End of Part 2]
Interlude
A thousand feet below the hot air balloon, three dolphins shot through the gentle gulf waves.
“You see those dolphins, right?” asked the balloon’s pilot as he ignited the burner to give the balloon a little more lift.
“Yep, I’ve been counting — that’s 11 so far,” said his friend, the lone passenger.
“That’s pretty good for a balloon ride this time of year.”
The two men watched the dolphins swim southward.
“Hey, is that a little island over there?” the passenger asked.
“Yeah! Bitty thing isn’t it?”
“Looks like a single tree, some rocks… What’s that blueish-green thing on the north end?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure — want to get a bit closer?”
“Sure.”
The pilot lit the burner again and slowly steered the balloon south, the coast of Florida’s panhandle barely visible to the north.
“Well, I’ll be.”
“What?”
“I know whose surfboard that is.”
“It’s a surfboard?”
“Yeah, a surfboard that was snatched by a sea otter. At least, that’s the story I heard. Supposedly, the creature — whatever it was — took it from a surfer, some rich kid vacationing in Seaside.”
“There’s not much surfing to be had there.”
“Nah, the kid was just messing around, maybe trying to learn, and he and some witnesses said the sea otter came floating up and proceeded to bite the board. Before the kid knew it, the sea otter was taking it out to sea.”
“It can’t be a sea otter, though. They aren’t native to this region.”
“No, they’re not. That’s why I thought the story was rubbish. But maybe there’s something to it after all. I’ll let some folks know where the surfboard ended up. If the family’s still here, they can probably hire someone to boat out and pick it up.”
With that, the pilot lit the burner again and began a slow, meandering trip back to shore.
Not long after, back on the little island, a groggy golden retriever raised his head and yawned. He had been sleeping in the shadows of some rocks. After a few minutes, he levered himself up, stretched, walked in a tight circle and then plopped himself down again with a grunt. Time for yet another nap.
Part 3
It took a few minutes for the three kids in the little bay boat to notice me.
The oldest, a teenager, was too preoccupied with steering the boat as close as possible to the island.
The two youngest (I found out only later that they are boy-girl twins) had spotted the surfboard bobbing in the water and were arguing about which of them saw it first.
It took three barks from me before all three kids raised their heads and looked out over the island — finally sighting me atop the rocky mound at the center of the island.
The little girl, having climbed out of the boat and jumped into the shallows, was the first to make her way towards me.
The older boy warned her to stay back, but — of course, and I say this humbly — what child can resist the happy face and wagging tail of a golden retriever (albeit a dirty and grungy looking one)?
I too ran towards her, and in about three bounds I was on top of her, licking her face and knocking her down, eventually repeating the process with her brother, and then, finally, with the older boy.
He seemed to be less of a dog person than the other two, but when I jumped up and placed my paws on his shoulder even he couldn’t resist a smile.
Then began a never-ending stream of questions from the two little ones:
“Why is he so dirty?”
“Is he a coyote?”
“Does he sleep here in a dog house?”
“Did he surf to the island?”
“Where did he learn how to surf?”
“Will the police put him in jail for stealing the surfboard?”
“Where is his family?”
“Where are his food and water bowls?”
“Does he have rabies?”
“Why doesn’t he have a collar?”
“What is his name?”
After a while, the older boy grew impatient trying to fabricate answers to these questions and yelled for the twins to pipe down.
Of course, that only unleashed a new round of questions, which began to morph into calls to bring me home in the boat.
While they were distracted, I took the opportunity to nose into an open backpack the older boy had set in the sand. It contained a carton of crackers and several baggies of cookies, among other less-edible things.
After a few seconds,the twins were crying that I was now stealing their cookies, and the older boy ran over to snap up the bag.
Fortunately, my bad behavior — I couldn’t resist! — didn’t end up costing me a ticket back to shore on the small bay boat.
While the older boy fished out the surfboard from the water nearby, the twins, realizing that I had not, in fact, eaten their cookies, generously decided to share a few fish-shaped crackers with me.
“But only three,” said the little boy, a stern look on his face.
I’ll skip all the sappy stuff about my return home to Ms. Mei and old St. Francis.
No doubt, Ms. Mei will share a lengthy account of my homecoming in an epic Facebook post, complete with photos and videos of me, moments after arriving, nosing into the food closet and burying my head in a bag of kibble.
Me nestled in my suspiciously warm dog bed — St. Francis just out of reach, staring me down and tearing apart a plush, felt mouse with his paws and teeth.
Me with the three kids who, gulp, saved my life.
Suffice to say, the boat ride home was uneventful.
No storm snuck up on us.
No massive wave tipped the boat and spilled me (or anyone else out).
The kids — particularly the oldest — manned the boat as if it was a toy — comfortably, even playfully.
They had expected to recover a surfboard stolen under mysterious circumstances — not to discover a house-trained golden retriever thought (reasonably so) to be long gone.
In the boat, on the way back to shore, I imagined each of the kids rehearsing the rescue story in their minds, eager to tell it to their friends and family — with their own tiny twist of the truth, no doubt.
I suppose, in this story, I might have done a little of that myself. But I assure you, with God, Ms. Mei and St. Francis as my witnesses, that everything pretty much happened just as I wrote it.
The storm might not have been quite as terrible as I made it out go be, but it was indeed a doozy.
I may not have got Baldy’s and Gordo’s words exactly right, but — without a notepad or recorder — I wrote them down as accurately as I could.
And, yes, it’s possible St. Francis was not wearing a helmet in my napmare-ish encounter with him in outer space, but I trust you’ll forgive me this and the other little embellishments.
I also trust you will allow me to step away from the keyboard without detailing what happened on that fateful boat ride that sent me sprawling into the gulf — and into this wild tale of dogged survival. Some things dogs just need to keep to themselves.
I still cannot bear to think about that day, and I have vowed never to set foot on a beach or boat again.
So no more leisurely walks with Ms. Mei on the beach for me.
No more tour boat rides to decommissioned lighthouses.
No more raw fish, ever. (Well, okay, on this point, I might be open to compromise should the bribe of treats be sufficient.)
I will, though, have many more of these: quiet, comfy naps in my cushy bed that smells suspiciously like St. Francis.
I know, in avoiding the beach, I will be missing out on pets from strangers, peanut butter treats for sitting patiently while Ms. Mei wades into the surf, strange seaside scents from rotting stingrays and dried seaweed passing through my nostrils, as well as surreal conversations with seagulls and on-the-lam sea otters.
But I’ve had my share of adventure, thank you very much, and now I would just like another hundred helpings of human-grade dog food — and unlimited naps without the rude awakening of torrential rains and wind nipping at my ears and tail.
Epilogue
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve learned just about all you need to know about Marco’s adventure on the little island — from Marco’s own mouth, no less.
But you may be wondering… (1) if Gordo, the sea otter, ever made it back to the West Coast, and (2) how St. Francis feels about Marco’s return home (and to his bed). Ms Mei was no doubt happy when the three kids showed up with Marco, his hair matted and tangled with sand, sea oats and crab legs. But (3) is she really going to keep Marco off future boat rides (after all, we know she loves tour boats)?
Here’s what we can tell you about the above:
Unfortunately, everything we know about Gordo is hearsay. A sea otter matching his description was recently seen off the coast of northern California, however it may very well have been his doppelgänger. And the sea otter in question was not in possession of a surfboard.
Ms. Mei is actually planning to participate in another lighthouse tour, but this one will take her to the Northeast. As a result, Marco will be boarded at a doggy daycare facility while she is away (and not on a boat).
St. Francis was extremely curious about the fishy smell that clung to Marco’s hair when he returned. As a result, the scent seemed to distract him from the loss of his (as it turns out, temporary) special sleeping privileges in Marco’s bed.
As for Baldy, well, nothing has been heard, sad to say.
Although… there was a curious incident recently when Marco, just waking up from a nap in the backyard, felt (more than saw) the sudden swoop of a bird and, almost immediately after, heard the plop of a small, brown fish on the ground in front of him.
By the time Marco had levered himself up and stuck his nose in the air, only the smell of the fish in front of him remained.
It was exceedingly odd to find a fish in the middle of a land-locked backyard. And Marco, having no appetite for more raw fish, could only think of one thing to do.
It’s safe to say that whatever hard feelings might have remained in St. Francis’ heart when Marco returned, they faded away when, at supper time that day, the cat found a smelly fish in his bowl and Marco reclining nearby licking his paws clean.
The End
When I first met the seagull, I overheard him say to himself, “Well, call me Baldy!” It’s not entirely clear if this really is his name. I never bothered to ask him, seeing as I was fighting for my life on the island. Nonetheless, in this text, I’ve decided to refer to him as Baldy. (I hope he won’t take offense if he reads my humble account.)
I know, my little ones — I still haven’t told you how I ended up on this wee little island. Just sit tight a little while longer… [Inaudible] What’s that? You’ll give me a treat if I tell the story right this minute? Hmmm. Give me a little time to think about your offer. You can be very persuasive, you know.
In fact, draw me a picture of what you think the sky might have looked like. Ask your mom or dad or grandpa or grandma or aunt or uncle or teacher or dog or cat or ferret or goldfish to email them to my human assistant at thelittleislandandthehungrydog [at] gmail.com. I’ll feature your beautiful drawing in a future post!