Parrothead in Paradise

by PastCat

Chapter 3

Over the next few days, we investigated the area. We started with campus, of course, guided by a battered map of the buildings from the bottom of someone’s backpack. Then we branched out into the surrounding neighborhoods to find places where people had once planted fruit trees. Not everything planted can survive on its own of course, but our mangoes were joined by guava, banana, and papaya. We did not venture down towards the beach just yet. Doc and I worked to make some kind of functional fishing equipment, so when the jerky ran out we’d be able to add fish and whatever else we could scavenge to our diets, but there was no feeling that we needed to hurry. Something about the ocean bothered me, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.

I don’t know about anybody else, but there was something about the remains of Honolulu that gave me the heebie jeebies. The idea of walking around a deserted city, even one that was falling to pieces, did not appeal at all. Not to mention that it was too quiet down there. The first time I went near there with Trish, we heard nothing but the distant surf; no birdsong, nothing. It was really eerie, like the forest around us was holding its breath and waiting for something bad to happen. No one wanted to go into Honolulu alone. We stayed on the inland side of the old H1 interstate that had separated the campus from the rest of the city.

I got a couple more chances to read the book over the next few days. We would each take it for an hour or two between scavenging trips, as someone would always stay back to keep an eye or two on home base. None of us went out alone; I spent most of my time with Trish, Nic, or Emmy. Doc took Adam with him whenever he went out. I kept a close watch on our stash of jerky. It was only a matter of time before it was gone, especially with two of us eating it. I did manage to find an alternate source of meat for the future though. One of the pages in the book described how to make a snare for catching small game. I set one up as an experiment to see what, if anything, I could catch. I came out with one of the biggest rats I had ever seen. I cached it in a tree overnight before I could stand to consider what I could do with it. It reminded me of the scene in Shrek where he and Fiona are eating rat on a stick. It was worth a try, I thought. After all, the ancient Romans used to eat doormice in honey when they watched gladiators in the colosseum. Rat on a stick should not be too hard, right?

Well, the first attempt went… poorly. Mostly because Nic came across me trying to light a fire using my old glasses as a focus for the sun and smelled the burning rat. That resulted in a stern discussion of how the winds blew around the island and the idea that cooking meat downwind of our home base was a much better one than the opposite being true. The rat was pretty fair though. It could have used some barbecue sauce. The snare also caught mongoose and a cat. I didn’t at first consider cat edible, but I had heard stories as a child from my great grandfather wherein he had referred to cat as “roof rabbit”. Oh, and it turned out there were still feral chickens on the island. I managed to catch a couple and keep them in a sort of coop in one of the intact buildings. They seemed happy enough to glean our scraps in exchange for the occasional egg, so it worked out for both parties. Doc approved of fried eggs, especially when added to a bit of meat for a sort of loco-moco.

We all did our own culinary experiments at one time or another. In the end, Emmy took over as the executive chef for everything save Doc’s and my meat adventures (we swapped that duty). Emmy was the one to figure out how to find wild herbs and even salt for flavoring. Her skill at scavenging and cooking definitely made those early days more bearable.

Eventually, Doc and I made a trip to a secluded cove on the eastern part of the island to test our fishing equipment. On the map, it was labelled as Hanauma Bay and was a nature reserve. I’d been there before to go snorkeling. One advantage to having fur: I wouldn’t be getting sunburned on this trip! Our nets worked pretty well considering how much we improvised in making them. The best prize was when a whole bunch of sea turtles came ashore to lay eggs and whatnot about a week after we’d started our fishing trips. We left most of them alone, but took the remnants of a nest that the birds had uncovered. I can’t really describe the flavor: kind of fishy, kind of salty, and with the sulfur-y taste that a lot of eggs seem to have after being cooked. I can’t agree with Doc’s assertion that they “taste like chicken”.

We did our best to make our shelter more homelike. Emmy had the bright idea of using a couple of downed coconut palms to shore up the exposed side of the structure. The coconuts themselves had a husk that could be turned into fibers if one had the patience to do so. I decided to practice my patience as Doc had suggested and did my best to make enough rope to build myself a hammock. Adam said he approved, because it kept me quiet. I ignored him. It took me over a week and a half to get enough materials for it. In the end, my hammock held me… enough.

I kept doing the wing exercises from the book. I even managed to practice gliding down from trees and low buildings around my cooking site a few times. I didn’t feel ready to try and walk on clouds or anything like that. It still seemed too unreal to me. Adam continued to show a complete disinterest in flying of any kind. I don’t know what Doc said to him, but whatever it was seemed to make him at least grudgingly accepting of the situation. He still resisted reading anything from the book as best as I could tell, but at least he stopped trying to walk on two legs around home base. I won’t say we were thriving. We weren’t. Not yet. But I hoped we would at least keep surviving.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

What's a parrothead?

[SolangeEggbert]

9249052
Griffins can apparently have different birds as their front half, along with lion on the back. The protagonist has a parrot head.