Chaos in Paradise
Rosa hated eating eggs. She considered it murder.
“How can you eat eggs knowing that every time you do, you’re killing one of us?” Julia and the rest of the family who loved eggs and ate eggs every breakfast tried to plead with Rosa for some common sense.
“They aren’t Sandpiper eggs!” Julia tried to explain to her younger sister. “They are chicken eggs.” In Rosa’s defence she did not know what a chicken was, so couldn’t comprehend her sister’s explanation. Finally, after hitting a wall on numerous occasions, Julia said, “chickens are like seagulls. Don’t we hate seagulls?”
Well, that didn’t turn out the way Julia or her mother had hoped. “Yuck! I hate seagulls. They’re horrible creatures. Why would anyone want to eat their eggs for breakfast?” And so the debate continued as to what Rosa would or would not eat. The rest of the family loved eggs and at breakfast they offered Rosa as an alternative, a worm or two promising her that they were actually bacon rind but from a wiggly Piggly. Rosa subsequently relented and began to eat eggs, because she knew full well that pigs weren’t kosher. Secretly though she loved eggs, especially the many different ways Julia made them.
She boiled them in sea water, fried them on a rock in the hot sand, poached them in the little puddles of water when the tide went out and scrambled them, using one of the myriad seashells that littered the beach as pots. “Can we throw eggs up in the air,” asked Rosa one day, “and see if they come down as a bird.” Her father rolled his eyes and wondered many a time whether Rosa really was one of his.
Julia at the end of most days would sit on the beach, affectionately watching the little Sandpipers who had recently hatched run in and out of the waves under the guidance of their parents. At the same time, she would leaf through a book of recipes deciding what to make for dinner. Yes, of course, the mainstay of their table was fish. However, she had been given a challenge by Rosa to turn the fish either her father or her uncle Jeremy had caught, into fish sticks. That wasn’t to be an easy task, but it was one that Julia was up for.
The first time she made fish sticks was a disaster. Julia wasn’t sure if she needed to use glue to stick them together and not being able to lay her wings on any, decided instead to sit and watch the fish that had been caught recently flipping on the hot sand until they flipped no more. She then flew up and landed on them squeezing the last bit of life out of them and then continued until they were mashed up. She then lay them out to dry in the sun while she watched over them intently to make sure seagulls didn’t fly off with them. When she presented those at dinner to Rosa, she was at first very excited but once she had taken a small mouthful she realised that wasn’t what she wanted.
“There aren’t any sticks in these,” she said mournfully. Julia tried to explain to her sister that fish sticks don’t have sticks in them. They are just called that because they look like sticks. It wasn’t something Rosa was capable of understanding, and so that was the end of that. Fish pie was another delicacy Julia made and that was always a hit, but not with Rosa. Once was enough. Leftover fish pie was a no, no. “Why do we have to have this again?” she asked.
Julia and her mother answered, “we have leftovers so we have to finish them.” Not an answer Rosa wanted to hear. So Julia was left with the unenviable task of coming up with different dinners each night, so that everyone in her family and especially Rosa was satisfied. Her resources were limited though. One of their delicacies, snails were in short supply. The seagulls whenever the snails appeared, beat the Sandpipers to them. Over the years the Sandpipers had thought of ways to defeat the dreaded seagulls and went to the extent of purchasing at the local hardware store in Surf City a box of baking soda and sprinkling that on the sand the next time the snails appeared for their bi annual charity event. The problem was that once the seagulls had ingested the lovely white looking stuff, a chemical reaction took place in their stomachs and they puffed up and exploded to their cheers of the Sandpipers. However, once the seagulls had caught on to the trick they flew off in a huff. The Sandpipers ran to pick up the snails only to find that they had been knocked unconscious by pieces of the seagulls hitting them and the results were disgusting. Julia, who was the one who came up with the idea together with her brother Timmy, realised that snails had to be removed from the night’s dinner menu.
And so Julia sat one day looking out at the ocean and the little young Sandpipers running in and out of the waves with glee chasing the water as it receded and then running back on shore when the water chased them back in, smiled believing that that was the only way to live. And then she had an incredible idea. Why couldn’t she go to Surf City to talk to the deli owner there Chaim Slotnick and ask his advice as how to go about making gefilte fish for the high holidays. Her mother Sybil wasn’t going to help, and even though she had found a recipe to bake it in pastry, she was never a good baker and maybe Mr Skotnik could help.
The next day she got dressed very early and told Timmy where she was going, but asked him not to tell, “Mummy because Chaim Slotnick is a reform Jew and Mummy won’t like it.” But Timmy thought it would be a good time for him to sneak out and see his new girlfriend, Melanie Krupnick.
The two of them began their long trek along the beach holding wings so that they didn’t get lost. As they walked and walked and walked, they realised that Surf City was a long way away. But then disaster struck. They found their path blocked by ten large ugly seagulls. They stood there with their wings crossed. They looked at Julia, “you’re the Sandpiper that blew up some of our friends and family!”
Julia and Timmy were petrified. They didn’t know what to do. “I think you are mistaken,” said Timmy finally, his brain in high gear trying to find an answer to their predicament. The largest of the seagulls whose name was Charger glared at Timmy.
He then without saying anther word to them turned to the seagull on his right, Leaky Foot, and shouted, “grab the little girl we need to make an example of them. No one fools around with us. We are the rulers of the waves and the beach and everything around here. In fact, grab them both……..” To be continued.