Captain Pete and the Pursuit of Happiness By Dr John Edwards

Shower Time

Captain Pete is a bird, but not just an ordinary one like you see in the trees in the parks around Rockford or on your yard at home. Captain Pete is a blue and yellow parrot, just like the ones that live with pirates, except he lives here in your hometown. Pete is a curious bird and likes to see new things. In a lot of ways he is a lot like you and I. He plays with toys, he likes to sing, and he loves exercise. Pete is always learning new words, trying new foods, and making new friends.

Pete is a very messy eater. He loves to eat bananas but they are very sticky and he gets the fruit all over his beak and front feathers. It’s really funny to see him eat food after having a banana because it sticks to his face like green, red and orange decorations! Although everyone has a laugh when he does this, Pete learned it’s not very nice to be dirty all the time. One day he decided he wasn’t going to have a bath. He got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. Captain Pete got so dirty his feet stuck to his perch and fruit flies were buzzing around trying to eat the bits of food on his feathers. Even his friends Doc and Aly stopped coming by because he was getting so stinky! One day Doc had to step in and stop all this dirtiness.

“Pete, this is getting gross! There’s banana on your nose, orange juice on your toes, and there’s so many flies I can’t see your eyes! I’m giving you a shower!” Doc said. Pete didn’t know what a shower was because he’d only had baths. He was a bird, and all the little birds Pete knew took baths, too. Pete wondered if he was big enough to take a shower and kept wondering about it as Doc reached his arm into the cage scooped him up, gooey toes and all. The fruit flies buzzed around them both in a big cloud until the two friends ran for the bathroom and shut the door. Pete thought now would be a good time to talk to Doc about this whole “shower” thing.

“Doc,” Captain Pete began, “all my life I’ve only taken baths. Its what little birds do. We stand in the water and splash around with our beaks. Sometimes we play with toys, sometimes we sing, and sometimes our Mama-birds will help wash behind our ears. I’m afraid that if I take a shower I will get water in my eyes and I might not be able to breathe because the water will splash me in the face. I really don’t want to take a shower,” Pete confessed, “because I’m kind of scared to.”

Doc could see his little feathered friend was actually nervous about taking his first shower, so he tried to give him some encouragement. “Pete, a shower is really just like standing in the rain except its warmer. If you’re worried about water getting into your eyes, just squeeze them tightly shut when you’re washing your face and turn away from the water for the rest of the shower. You see, there’s far more places the water isn’t during a shower- there’s space in between the streams of water, there’s space outside of the streams of water, and when you put your back to the shower there’s all the air in front of you to breathe. You don’t worry about the water when you’re caught outside in the rain, do you?”

Captain Pete thought about it for a little while and remembered that he really did like the rain. He liked splashing in the puddles and catching raindrops with his tongue. Pete decided that maybe he was just being a blueberry chicken. “No, I guess not,” he answered his friend. Doc smiled and nodded to his friend, noticing that Pete was relaxing and felt better about trying this new thing. He turned the great big knob that makes the water pour from the bathtub faucet, then pulled the metal lever that closed the tap and forced the water back up behind the wall and out again through the shower head. Whissssshhhhhh!!!! went the water as it came out of the nozzles high above and onto the bottom of the tub. Doc picked Pete up and set him down in the tub outside of the circle where the water was landing so his feathers could stay dry until he was ready to stick his head in. Captain Pete could feel the water running over his toes and looked at the spray landing in front of him. It was strange, almost exactly like rain as Doc had said, except for the drops were landing in one place instead of everywhere around him. It was like standing at the end of a rainbow and being able to walk in and out of it. Captain Pete closed his eyes, took a big breath in, and waddled forward into the spray of the shower.

“RAAAWWWKK!” Pete squawked as the water poured on his head, down his neck, and ran down his back to his long tail. Captain Pete really liked this feeling! He flapped his big wings and tried to open his eyes while he was in the spray. “This isn’t so bad. I like it. Showers feel good!” Pete chirped up to Doc with a smile.

Doc watched as the water washed the bits of food off his feathered friend’s beak and rinsed his sticky feet clean. Pete ran back and forth, in and out of the spray from the shower, flapping his wings and squawking loudly the whole time. Doc decided to tell Pete why he preferred shower time to bath time.

“It sure looks like you’re having fun, Captain Pete,” Doc began.

“RAAAWWWKK!” Pete squawked back in agreement.

Doc laughed. “Baths can be okay for relaxing or playing in, but I find I can get clean faster in a shower. Plus, showers use less water, and that’s good for the environment. When I lived in Australia everyone took showers because we didn’t have much water. I have friends who would store the rainwater in barrels and use that for their main water supply. If it didn’t rain much over the summer they had to really conserve. My buddies used to have shower races and told me I could wash my hair and get clean from head to toe in three minutes if I tried. We don’t have water restrictions here, but the three-minute game is still something I play every time I take a shower. Not only is it a fun challenge, but saving water is something I can do every day to help our planet, so that makes me feel good too.”

“Do you think I could play the three minute game?” Pete asked Doc after his story. Doing things like making the bed, taking out the garbage, and washing up can get boring for a little bird like Pete, so he’s learned that if he makes a game out of chores they’re a lot more fun.

“Pete, you’re such a little bird! Your tail feathers are longer than you are! The bathtub floor can be slippery so you shouldn’t rush, but I think you definitely could get under three minutes in the Shower Time Game.”

“Alright-y then,” Captain Pete said, spreading his wings under the shower spray. “Time me!”

Doc smiled back and said in his best game show host voice “Greetings, Captain Pete, and welcome to the ‘Shower Time Game.’ On your marks…Get set…Go!!!”