MISSING BALLOON - EXTREMELY SMALL REWARD

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not the sort to go out and buy a seven-dollar balloon shaped like a parrot, but when the happiness of my girl (the younger one) is at stake then reputation be damned, I will buy that balloon. You see, she enjoys batting at large interesting balloons while sitting in her office bouncy-chair, which means (a) she is pleasantly entertained, and (b) I can get at least five minutes' worth of work done.

The big transparent dolphin balloon finally withered away to sea-jerky, so today was the day to head out to Diddams party supply store and have the gothic girl who mans the helium tank fill up a new one. The baby likes balloons with lots of pointy ends, so the parrot fit the bill pretty well, we thought, and $7.58 later we were rolling along with our shiny new friend.

She was having a bit of trouble falling into her morning nap, so we tacked another mile or so onto our walk, all the while mindful of keeping the parrot out of low-hanging foliage and street signs and whatnot. Well, I think that gothic girl needs to up her intake of proteins and vitamin D, because the knot she had used to tie the balloon to the string and floor-weight was pretty damned weak. Somewhere around the intersection of San Carlos Avenue and that street by Longs Drugs the string went limp in my hands and I looked up to see that the bird had taken flight. With a sinking heart I bade the entourage to stop and get mad at me, which promptly occurred. Head hung in shame, I wound the string into a ball and tucked it in a pocket.

SO, the upshot of all of this is that if you find a large metallic parrot balloon, and it's still in decent shape, by all means drop me a line. Last I saw it was headed somewhere high over Highway 280, roughly in the direction of San Francisco, and just gathering steam. I understand there's an infestation of feral parrots somewhere near Coit Tower — perhaps it found its way there, to be worshiped like the godlike thing that it was.