"Bight me". This sailor was not in the best mood and he looked a little beat up too. His lips were parched and there was a nasty rope burn across the palm of his right hand.

Jill was no stranger to salty seamen with less than pleasant attitudes having worked the hardware store at the end of the dock for as long as she could remember.
"One length of rope for the gentleman", she beamed into her assistant's ear.

Thinking of the previous encounter with this deckhand, the assistant made sure to provide him with a length just shy of the requested. He was always cockeyed by 9am due to his morning bottle of rum.

"Tell me sailor", said Jill. "Those are some sexy sea legs you got there. Do you work out?", pointing at the sailors nobby stump.
Almost in unison, both the sailor and his parrot replied, "Arrr!".

" Speak up " , said Jill , " or is there grool in your drool "

With a weathered face similar to that of a fifteen year old pug, the salty dog snarled though his teeth, "are you done with the rope yet she devil!" She turned to him and with a pleasant face, threw it at his chest scaring the parrot nearly onto the head of the bastard.

The parrot, who'd had quite enough and realizing it had regained some semblance of flight, (due to negligence, its wings hadn't been clipped in ages) flapped around the store, explosively relieved itself of a milky white discharge on the next customer in line and flew out the door heading for the end of the dock, a righteous thing with feathers.

The Jill was forced to consider how she had been on the receiving end of more than one milky white discharge. And feathers had been involved on more than one occasion. She grasped a thick length of rope casually, allowing it to loll around in her hands.
"Well," she finally said, "is that all ye'll be needing?"

The feathery parrot let out a relieved,"MA-CAW!", packed his stay-fresh soft pack of Lucky Strike filterless smokes, and struck an instalite balsawood match on the jagged corner of the tooth pick pregnant plank that protruded so proudly pointing at the precipice.

He lit it and hit it and inhaled way deeply, as he usually did, after succumbing to his capricious dictates and casually watched the match burn till the very end, the wood blackening and twisting and rising into the smoke of the flame. Exhaling, he noticed the arrival of one of those customized sports compact cars , favored by the nouveau-immigrant coastal youth weaned on hip hop and deep fried dreams, pull into the car park by the jetty.

His casual gaze suddenly changed into a wide eyed leer of unmistakable lust. From the passenger seat of the car emerged a scarcely clad disgrace to feminism: someone who traded visual access to breasts for attention. "Well, well, well," he drawled, "Polly definitely does want a cracker".

Back on the dock , during her lunch break , Jill had decided to head back to her new venture that she had been saving up for , a designer peg leg boutique , named after her mother ilene. She did not have a limp in her step , or a vague feeling of regret after the encounter with the bird at the store , but she was determined as ever to get out of there and start anew, albeit that "ILENE'S" would only be five storefronts away. She liked the dock

and its charmingly rugged characters.

Just yesterday she'd helped Captain Kanga adjust his third leg, a flexible plank attached to his lower back and extending to the ground. The plank was designed to offer the poor bi-peg additional support and (according to a colorful anecdote) protection from pirates on the open seas. She'd noticed the captain remarking how the plank cradled his bottom like a chastity belt and immediately suggested a

knurled protuberance that would inflict the sort of cheer sea dogs alone on the high seas appreciated, only after Captain Kanga scoffed at the thought of protection. "My doors are wide open for any pirate!" he scallywagged, sending grog agog over the sides of his cup. His eyes misted over, as they were wont to do when reminiscing was a-peg. He took a sighing gulp and began, "There was a swab, with nary a booty, come on the back of sea turtles..."