Pirates!

This week at camp is pirate week, so here are a couple (hopefully true) pirate facts. And a fun pirate snack.


- Why did pirates have parrots with them? Although it is difficult to say with 100% certainty why, historians (anthropologists?) believe that they carried parrots for the same reason they did everything else – gold! Since they were travelling everywhere anyways, they’d catch the beautiful birds, and bring them to rich people, who I’m sure paid a pretty penny to keep the birds as a pet. And that meant more money for the pirates.

- Why did pirates wear eye patches? Yes, they may have used some of them to protect hurt eyes (just as they wore peg-legs in place of a real one), but I think there’s another reason they wore them. Have you ever walked from a very bright place, outside maybe, to a dark place really quickly? It takes a bit for your eyes to adjust, for your pupils to dilate enough to see correctly. Pirate ships are a bit like this – down below is quite dark, where the deck during the day is probably pretty bright. Imagine you were in the middle of a fight, or had to run below deck to grab that important bottle of rum – you wouldn’t want to take the time for your eyes to adjust. So you’d just keep one eye adjusted to the dark all of the time. Time to go in the dark? Just flip your patch up!

- The "skull and crossbones" flag is called the "Jolly Roger".

A pirate snack – Walk the Plank Jello

Our ridiculously wonderful camp cooks (seriously, I though camp food was supposed to be bad?) made this yesterday, and I thought it was cute. All you need is blue Jello, wafer cookies, and Swedish fish. For each serving, scoop the Jello into a small bowl, and stick a couple of Swedish fish in it. Then, lay the wafer cookie on top – now you can deliciously walk the plank! It is cute and it tastes good!