America's Most Wanted Pelican

This morning as I watched the pelicans glide past on their morning jaunt, one of the ferry employees, a gnarled white-haired older gent with a twinkle in his eye, came over to me and said “They don’t make good pets, you know. They’re real grumpy!” To which I replied, “What if they’re flying by saying the same thing about you right now?!”

“I AM grumpy!” said Mr. A. “I’m an old man!”

He continued, “But these pelicans is truly grumpy. One morning we pulled up to the dock and one of them sits on the ramp and won’t move. The cars can’t get off the boat cause that pelican, he won’t budge. So we called the cops on ‘im! And the cop shows up and he says, ‘you want me to do what now?’ and so he goes over to the pelican, who’s just sittin’ pretty on the ramp and he says, ‘Hey pelican! Get outta here! Go on and move now!’ But the pelican WON’T MOVE! We sat there for maybe 10 minutes just scratching our heads and finally that pelican, he spreads his wings and he just glides off. I think these pelicans come from Myrtle Beach, so I imagine that pelican was just tired and he needed to rest a little bit and ain’t nobody was gonna get him to move til he was good and ready.”