Yeah, there’s just no denying it – pirates and parrots belong together like…uh…like two…kinda things that belong together. Where the one thing is a species of animal, and the other thing an illegal profession. Anyway, the pirate/parrot connection goes back at least to Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island…and, actually, it looks like it goes back at most to that book, since Stephenson seems to have come up with it without any historical inspiration…
But ever since Long John Silver limped around sporting one of those fashionable speaking/squawking birds on his shoulder, they have become an indispensable costume accessory for any serious pirate, corsair or other aquatic freebooter. “Pirates of the Carribean” even expanded on the issue, featuring not only a shoulder-mounted parrot on one of the pirates (occasionally employed to supply foreshadowing) but also a shoulder-mounted, undead Cappucin monkey named after the main character. I bet they’d find that one hard to top if they make a fourth part to the series…
Father John Captain McKenzie hasn’t been a pirate for all that long, of course, so he’s still in the process of collecting together all the necessary gear whenever an opportunity presents itself. To his great dismay, he’s still missing a proper parrot…the closest thing he could find was that oddly stoic vulture, gnawing on Snuka’s remains at that time. But it was better than nothing, so he used his awesome pirate skill of effective recruiting (a.k.a. “pressganging”), combined with his considerable talent with aquarel colours, and voila – at a large distance, it might almost look somewhat parrotish. Unfortunately, vultures aren’t that good in locating living persons, and their communication skills aren’t quite on the same level as a parrot’s – and so, I guess, I’ll have to score this round as a victory for the ninja side. And that means that, for the time being, ninjas and pirates are even again!
And, yeah, that’s a vulture painted like a parrot in panel six. You could call it a vulrot, or a parture. And that means that I’ve now done myself what I mocked in others as recently as four days ago – created a random combination of different animals. I guess that’s pretty hypocritical even by my standards, isn’t it? =P
That thing in panel four is a tumbleweed, by the way. An airborne tumbleweed. Those are a new breed, genetically engineered for one specific purpose: to add a sense of stasis and desolation to a scene whenever there isn’t sufficient space to have a tumbleweed roll along on the ground…
Don’t miss the next exciting round of this riveting stealthy assassin/boisterous buccaneer duel on Thursday! Today’s new voting incentive features Link.