The original plan was to go hang out in the French Quarter for the big, free festival this weekend, but it didn’t quite come together.

Friday things kicked off downtown, and while I was getting dressed, the local news was covering the opening, including all of the new stuff for kids- special musical acts, crafts, and very excitingly, costumed characters to walk around and entertain.

Up pops this guy:

Who, along with his parrot starts singing a bastardized version of “What can you do with a drunken sailor-” he’d made it kid-friendly by turning it into “What can you do with a crazy pirate?”

Still, I was only watching with half an eye as I herded puppies, yelled at Alison to get it in gear, etc. But the further he got into the song, the more excited he got by it, until his head was really bobbing and weaving, the cap’s beaded fringe swinging and swirling…

I’ve become really attuned to annoyed birds and his sun conure was showing all the signs of peevishness spiraling toward snapishness. He glared suspiciously at the hat as it swung around…until the inevitable happened.

Hat met bird, bird went

PEEP!

and lunged at poor Papillion the pirate. After that his song was a little more subdued, and he kept an eye on the bird to make sure it wasn’t about to pull his ear off.

I fell out. It was by far the funniest thing I’d seen in forever, largely because I could totally relate to it.

So when I saw him strolling the Quarter on Sunday morning before the tourists were even out, I had to talk to him and took the above photos. I told him I’d seen the interview, and he grinned, stroking the bird, and said wasn’t it great that she had even given “a great piratey squawk” during the song. However you want to interpret it, buddy, you go ahead.

It was later noted that he must be the most genial looking pirate in the history of the world. I got curious and did a little work to find his name and site.

So it turns out he’s “Captain Papillion, the prodigious purveyor of positive pirating,” has a masters in education, and most importantly his resume includes winning the Pillager of the Year Award at last year’s PyrateCon.

Having never heard of such a thing, I checked it out, and omg, it’s fate! PyrateCon is the biggest pirate convention in the country- and it happens next weekend, right here in the French Quarter!

I can hardly imagine. Pirates. Everywhere. Piratey- pirates. Drunken pirates. Pillaging pirates.

I totally know what I’ll be doing next weekend.

Thank god I own a costume shop.

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