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There are times when I hear Groucho Marx in my head.

“This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got
into my pajamas I’ll never know,” as the great mustachioed, cigar-chomping
comic actor reputedly said.

In my case it wasn’t an elephant, but rather a pelican and
it was an old pair of lounging pants, not pajamas. The bird wasn’t wearing
them. I was.

I did shoot the sucker, but with a camera, of course. ( See This Week's Photos.)

The bird was flying above a lake near my parents’
condominium in Florida.

My recent trip was somewhat unexpected, the result of a
conspiracy. One day ChaddsFordLive.com publisher Emily Myers told me that she
and my sister decided that I needed a vacation. (They’ve known each other for a
number of years.) Two weeks later I was on a plane—at 7 a.m.— heading to a
semi-sunny and less than warm Ft. Lauderdale. From what I was told it was
warmer and less windy here than there, the week I was away.

But I did need to get away. Not a day had gone by in more
than a year when I wasn’t concerned about how best to build the editorial side
of ChaddsFordLive with multiple day parts spent either checking e-mail, writing
something, figuring out how to design the pages or just simply making things
better. I needed the time off.

But visiting ones elderly parents is not playtime. It wasn’t
painfully obligatory and I did spend some quality timer with my folks, but I
sure did need more beach time. I did get out to a place called Deerfield Beach
with my father a couple of times. Only one afternoon were we able to stay for
any length of time, though. Our previous trip was too short because it was
chilly.

We did make another attempt, in between those two tries.
This one time, however, my mother would go too. My father decided he wanted to
go to Juno Beach, the one near Jupiter not Normandy.

Dad said it was a better beach, quieter with less of a
crowd. Too bad we never got there. He made two wrong turns along the way and we
wound up in an area he had never been. He was profusely apologetic, but mom and
I ragged on him for not using his GPS.

So we had lunch at a deli called Too Jays in a shopping
center that, to me, looked like all the other shopping centers in the area. At
dinner, I was the one being ragged on about some of the foods I make. No, I
won’t go into that now.

But while I didn’t get to spend all the time on the beach
that I wanted, it was still good to get away and see the family. And I did
shoot that pelican, something you don’t see along the Brandywine. Birds here
don’t wear lounging clothes.