Parrot Eyes Lost

By Barton Grover Howe

What begins as a morning of non-compensating for Surfland, Oregon’s Jackson Poe ends with a hyper-carnivorous eagle, a non-flying parrot and a mystery for Poe: Why are the coast’s birds of prey suddenly making snacks of Surfland’s pets? Following the trail from the beach to a daycare center for the perpetually hyper, Poe finds the truth: A perverter of the wild kingdom, whose need for greed is mutual with anyone willing to pay. So, Poe works with a beautiful marine biologist and a not-so-beautiful guy named ScubaPoop, to set a trap.
But when everything goes wrong, and even the normally unflappable Jackson Poe seems to have gone off the deep-end, it looks like it just might be Parrot Eyes Lost.

“I giggled my way from on end of this short book all the way to the other. ... Love it.”
—Ionia Martin, Amazon Top 500 Reviewer

“Oregon’s answer to Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry.”
—Sheldon McArthur, North by Northwest Books

“Move over Carl Hiassen, Tim Dorsey, Steve Berry and all the other Florida humor satire writers. A new voice and a very accomplished one I predict will be around for a long time, Howe does for the Oregon Coast what Hiaasen and the others have done for Florida.”
—Sheldon McArthur, North by Northwest Books, on Beach Slapped

“A non-stop laugh you cannot put down.”
—Sheldon McArthur, North by Northwest Books, on The Beach is Back

Barton Grover Howe is an award-winning writer, humor columnist, stand-up comedian and performer who has spends his days finding the humor in life or making it up—sometimes both. When he’s not writing, or joking, he teaches high school, which inspires some of his best jokes. He lives in a small town on the Oregon coast within shouting distance of Surfland with his incredibly patient wife and exasperatingly adorable daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barton Grover Howe
• Release date: Aug 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466066885

Barton Grover Howe

Barton Grover Howe is a high school teacher and humor columnist who has spent most of the last 10 years teaching, being a mascot and generally not being near as funny as he thinks he is. A former newspaper reporter, hotel manager, aquarium diver, stand-up comedian, forcibly retired Disney On Ice performer and professional mascot, Barton Grover Howe has combined his experiences and skills from all of those environments to create writing with a voice like no other. Living proof that you don’t need hurricanes blowing the palm trees sideways to get beach slapped time and again. He currently resides in the only small town on the Oregon coast that has seven miles of coastline and not one boat dock. He is married to the most patient woman on earth and is father to the cutest daughter in the universe, who got all of her looks from her mother.

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Copyright Information

Parrot Eyes Lost

Copyright © 2014 by Barton Grover Howe

Published 2014 by Flying Starfish Press

First published in 2011 by BGH Publishing

Cover art copyright © 2014 by Yuliaglam/Dreamstime, Julien Tromeur/Dreamstime

Cover design copyright © 2014 by Flying Starfish Press

BEACH SLAPPED copyright © 2014 by Barton Grover Howe

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Flying Starfish Press at flyingstarfishpress.com.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every attempt to provide accurate contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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Table of Contents

Beach Slapped Sample

About the Author

Other Books by Barton Grover Howe

Copyright Information

To Carol,

who inspired me

to flighty greatness

CHAPTER 1

Gypsy

AS SPECTACULAR EVENTS go, what happened to Gypsy at 10 a.m. that Sunday morning wasn’t even the most interesting thing to happen in town that month. That label went to Kinkel McGuire’s awkward afternoon when he got his nipple caught in one of those machines that smashes pennies into souvenirs. It wouldn’t even be called the event that left the most lasting impression. That title, too, went to Kinkel, who would spend the rest of his life with a tiny Lewis & Clark embossed on his left breast.

Certainly, in the niche of highly visual brawls in public spaces, it was noteworthy. When Gypsy suddenly found herself in the grip of a seeming vice clamp with daggers, it was the beginning of something that coastal Surfland, Oregon, had never seen. Being honest, however, the fight last week at the pizza place began with far more excitement. Tired of the owners of the pizza place insulting her husband on their sign board, the high school principal’s wife went through their drive-thru window at 15 mph—in a boat.

Gypsy’s fight wasn’t even the most protracted, although if witnesses were to testify later that they thought it was, they would be forgiven for doing so. With Gypsy clad in the colors of the rainbow and her attacker all dark brown save for a shock of white atop the head, it reminded many of a gay pride flag wrestling a very drably dressed Anderson Cooper. Unfortunately their fight would only clock in at 48 seconds when it was all said and done. Nothing compared to Evan Kelstrup and Matthew Reider, who were still in protracted combat after 31 hours. Normally friends and partners, they had been actively jamming each other’s websites with QVC-related spam until one would concede to the other who had coined the term Macebook, their new anti-dating website.

But what Gypsy’s fight lacked in interest, origins or duration it more than made up for with its ending—when the brawlers shot forty feet straight up into the air.

CHAPTER 2

Penny Flett

AS THE PROPRIETOR of Surfland’s only beachside Tiki bar, Penny Flett’s morning had started off spectacularly well. From the minute her bamboo curtains parted at the walk-up window for customers at seven, she’d been busy. Her first customer ordered enough food for two, and perhaps he had reason to. Taking his to-go bags back to his giant black Hummer across the street, she presumed he was eating in the car with someone. Strange; you’d think he’d know better than to eat the special in closed spaces.

Like half her customers would that morning, he’d gotten her famous fiery bean breakfast enchilada. Made with a secret combination of Tabasco sauces she had a friend bring in from Louisiana and Oaxacan Pluma beans grown in a local greenhouse, the locals called it The Explosilada, for the fire it produced both going in and coming out. It took longer to prepare, certainly, but that didn’t bother most folks; it just gave them more time to hang out on the picnic benches and tables that lined the bamboo fence along the dunes on the shore.

Most importantly, however, it gave them a chance to partake in the reason people had been coming here for decades: Penny’s Parrots. Both the name of the business and her family passion since her literal birth, the protracted serving time gave her patrons a chance to mingle with the birds, many of whom sat on their stands free of cages. Most popular—and Penny’s favorite—was Gypsy, a nearly four-decade-old parrot that had seen more of the world than Penny had.

Covered with brightly colored feathers that seemed to span the rainbow—most parrots only had a few colors—she was unlike any parrot anyone had ever seen. Throw in her ability to mimic just about anything said to her—cussing at Penny’s was strictly prohibited—and it was no wonder generations of families had been making the trip to Surfland for to see her. On a busy summer day it wasn’t unusual at all to see a father telling his kids how Gypsy used to talk to him when he was their age.

Happy guests, happy tummies, happy birds: All were standard fare at Penny’s Parrots. Throw in a costumed parrot mascot that was spending the morning making animal balloons in the courtyard, and everyone was happy. As a businesswoman, this was what kept Penny going. Which was good, as everything behind the scenes seemed to be going to hell; it had been a very long week.

It had started last Tuesday when a bald eagle swept down out of the sky and plucked one of her baby parrots right off the stand. Horrified, Penny didn’t even have time to try to get her bird back, so quick was the attack. Not that speed really mattered; how exactly would anyone get the prey back from a bird of, well, prey?

Penny tried to take some comfort in the bigger picture: The return of bald eagles to the coast was a good thing after the species had nearly been wiped out on the ‘60s and ‘70s. Their massive nests topping the trees just on the other side of Highway 101, she saw them often circling above nearby Lenobar Bay looking for salmon, small rodents and now, apparently, parrots. It certainly wasn’t unheard of; parrots fell prey to raptors all the time in the wild.

That didn’t change how sad she was. Trained ornithologist or not, the birds were still her friends. Resolving to move their stands and perches closer to the walk-up window, she began humming Elton John’s The Circle of Life. Gypsy’s stand she moved first and especially close.

That was five days ago, and although Penny still pained at the loss of her parrot—she hadn’t even named him yet—there had been no more incidents. Which gave her time to focus on the other macro-glitch in her week: Kinkel McGuire. Whatever had possessed him to put his nipple into her penny-stamper, she had no idea.

Making 50 cents on every penny the machine smashed and then stamped a tiny Lewis & Clark on, it didn’t bother her a lick Lewis & Clark had never actually gotten this far south. Every dime counted, and if tourists wanted a completely irrelevant souvenir, Penny could live with the half-dollar dent to her karma.

Kinkel, however, was another problem. Not the medical bills; it was definitely not workman’s comp. Rather, Kinkel was her backup help at the window on weekdays and her all-star omelet flipper on Sundays. His absence had made the week an exhausting one, and this morning at the omelet bar a near-disaster. Not everyone wanted an Explosilada to start his or her morning.

As a result, nearly half of Penny’s customers on a Sunday morning came for the omelet bar beach-side, and on a normal morning Kinkel would have them coming up and sitting down within about five minutes. Throw in