Lucky Birds
"It doesn't really matter whether he got blotto or not. By the time, the poor chap staggered out of the pub along with all the other patrons, the damage had been done.
"His worldly possessions were swept away by a freak storm and the person in question had become a true castaway."
"Close," Eddie said motioning for the waiter who promptly obliged.
It was a fair deal, I reckon. Fast Eddie made sure that our glasses were rapidly replenished and I ensured that the waiter was well rewarded for his service. In return Fast Eddie kept me sitting on the edge of my seat, a remarkable trick considering the agonizingly slow progress of his tale.
I knew better than to ask what the commotion had been all about because Eddie would not deign tell me until he was plumb good and ready. We were left alone on the deck in almost total darkness save a moth shrouded light a few feet overhead.
"You see, he said, parking in the ashtray the pipe that had gone out for the umpteenth time, "the cages held some of the peskiest little creatures on the planet."
"They drowned," I suppose.
"They did," Eddie said smiling for the first time that evening.
"I take it that they were not your favorite sort."
"They did serve a purpose but if they'd made it ashore, Taveuni would now be bereft of bird life for those little critters simply adored birds' eggs. On Viti Levu, the mongoose was brought in to rid the sugarcane fields of rats, which they did in short order."
"You are speaking of a creature that can beat a snake hands down," I said.
"A bit of a mixed metaphor old boy," he replied. "Snakes don't have hands."
"A little play on words," I said lamely.
"The mongoose polished off every bird's egg for miles around on Viti Levu and would have done the same or worse to Taveuni."
"I can't help thinking that it must have been a horrible death for the poor critters left in cages that floated out to sea."
"It was a freak accident," Eddie said. "A late season storm blew up and turned the Strait, which is all of six miles wide, into a ferocious froth."
"So that's why Taveuni has such magnificent bird life."
"We are truly blessed," Eddie said.
"It is a paradise," I replied.
"Tell that to the laborers humping copra sacks down to the drying ovens," Eddie retorted. "It is home but
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