Lost and Found

Captain’s Log
Aboard Swell
February 27, 2015

I’ve had a few pets on Swell over the last nine years, but most of them made their way aboard on their own. Aside from a lost baby seabird I found after a cyclone, almost all of my non-human guests have been uninvited.

I don’t mind the geckos that often show up in banana stocks. They make cute coughing noises in the evening and cause no harm. I’ve hosted a wide variety of ants too—from teeny fuzzy black ones to enormous shiny red ones. They’re always extremely busy and don’t like being distracted, so I can’t say much for their company. A roving wasp colony lives in my spinnaker pole from time to time, but we tend to give each other space. Once a cricket turned up out of nowhere. I never saw him but I adored his evening serenades until they were no more. While I was away on a trip to California, a newlywed rat couple from the