‘I hate Capri’, snorted Mario as we were dropping
anchor, and I wondered if he was talking about the same beautiful island of the
Amalfi Coast of Italy that I was currently looking at.
‘Full of fucking seagulls’, he ended.
Hours later he spilled down the stairs like a mad man. ‘Give
me something to throw, like an orange, I’m gonna kill it!’ he yelled as he
grabbed the first piece of fruit he could find and stumbled back up the stairs.
We were still questioning what had just happened when he stomped back into the
crewmess mumbling, ‘Fucking seagulls. Teach you a fucking lesson I will... Shit
on my tender. Fucking seagulls. I hate hat Capri’.
We watched him in silence as he pulled out the medical
kit and broke a handful of Alka Seltzer tabs into pieces, still mumbling. He
then grabbed a loaf of sliced bread and started covering the pieces of Alka
Seltzer in it. Slowly recognition set in. Mini Me, who was still standing
holding the iron poised from Mario’s first entrance, eyed him suspiciously and
finally questioned in her somewhat ‘posh’ Essex accent, ‘Are you trying to blow
up birds?’
Mario seemed to suddenly become aware of Mini Me, Kay,
Jack, Magnus and myself watching his performance. He described the scenario of
how he had exited the side door and just as he was about to light a cigarette
he looked up to see the bird sitting on the 8 metre boat that he cleans several
times a day. In that moment, he said, the bird turned to look at him, made eye
contact, and pooped all over the cushions. He started bellowing profanities at
the bird and waving his arms frantically in a bid to chase it away, to which the
bird coolly looked back over, look a step to the left, and pooped again. It was
at this point when he flew into a blind rage and sought out a projectile from
the crew mess. He further explained the lack of regurgitating abilities of
gulls in general, and how the gull washing down his tasty Alka Seltzer treat
with water was something akin to sealing a Mentos in a Coke bottle. With that
he echoed another slew of vulgarities, swooped up about a dozen heavily breaded
pellets and exited the crew mess. We all looked at one another in silence for a
few moments.
‘I’m gonna go watch.’ I announced.
‘Me too!’ chimed Kay, and we both scrambled off our
seats, leaving Mini Me to her ironing and her distress. We made our way to the
swim platform where we found Mario yelling into the night, and couldn’t only
just make out the birds floating on the water by the red reflection of the
flood lights in their eyes.
‘Fucking devil birds! Raaaaaaaa!’, he shrieked, as he
tossed more pellets in their direction. I could have imagined him less mad had
I found him naked on the bow howling at the moon with a bag of popcorn. Kay and
I started to giggle and the more distressed he became, the harder we laughed,
until he was eventually throwing pellets so hard and far that he nearly threw
himself into the water.
‘They’d be all
over that shit if it was just normal bread!’ he eventually laughed too as
he wiped the spittle away from his mouth and came back to his senses. Later he
showed us this video: