The story behind Frank the Booby
04-2020 // ROMAN KRÄMER
Hey you! How are you? My name is Frank. They call me Frank the Booby here. To be honest, I’m a bird and a personification of Roman. But Roman learned back in school that impersonations are a rhetorical device to get the reader more involved in the story and attract attention. In this case I am very close to the humanization. Well, let’s get back to me and not to Roman’s abstruse ideas about my character.
I’m a blue-footed Booby and have a strong resemblance to a seagull. But my clear unique selling point are my blue feet. Please, take a closer look at them. But more about that later…
I think that these feet are why Roman is so fascinated by me and my relatives. I find them very impressive, but sometimes I find it a pity that most people reduce me to the blue colour of my feet. Just plain superficial! But I totally drift away. Actually I wanted to introduce you to my wonderful home. I live here on the island ‘Isla de la Plata’ in Ecuador or in other words: ‘The Galapagos for the poor’. I don’t know why exactly, but many tourists are staring at me every day but it’s fine. They leave me alone most of the time. Roman thinks that I deserve more attention because I am an awesome bird. He likes me especially for my goofy attitude on land. While I am a representation of grace and power in the air and water, I am not so well renowned for my movements on land. The name booby is derived from the Spanish word bobo, which can mean ‘stupid’, ‘fool,’ or clown. But anyways, you should check me out while I fly or when I reach nearly 100 km/h and hit into to water to dive.
This is how it looks where I live. Isla de la Plata. There is not much to say about this island. It is 40 km far away off shore from Ecuador. The closest city is Puerto Lopez. The Islands vegetation is not special, mainly gray bushes. But aswell a few “Palo Santo“ Trees – come here and smell them. By far the best thing is, that all my buddies are here. By the way, this guy is on the picture is Eddy. We live together here with other blue footed and red-footed boobies, a few Nazcar-Boobies and sea lions that hang around on the beach sometimes.
This is Harold and Bertha, they are my grandparents. They are already quite old, around 14 years, if I remember right. Our usual life span can be up to 17 years. These guys can be a bit grumpy from time to time. I guess being grumpy when you are old is not a matter of species. But I enjoy their symbiosis they developed over time. Did you know that we like to sit on each other? Well..not exactly. But we like to flirt and mate. We have a special courtship when the male Boobies dance around to impress the female. During that procedure we like to show our blue feet and also sky-point our head while raising our wings. This graceful but goofy show maybe brought us aswell the name Booby. Who knows.
The guy in this meteor impact zone is called Dyck. We all think that Dyck is a bit lazy. He does not even get up to poo. He just turns around a little bit and creates this circle of his own discharge around him. But especially this scene inspired Roman to create the whole series. Roman thinks that Dyck looks like a blazing meteor crushing on this earth’s surface so that he created this mood. It is always interesting to change your perspective to boost your creativity and get new ideas. Thanks Dyck for his lazyness.
We like to walk and we like to walk our path. Where do we walk? We don’t care – we just want to show our blue feet and make a path.
In the last part I want to present you the handsome booby we have here on the island. His name is Billy. I think you already realised that he is the pure beauty of a Booby. This is why Roman chose him to finish this series. I should tell you that Roman wants to thank you for your understanding to share his excitement about birds with you. He thinks it is worth it. Come visit us soon in Ecuador.
Best regards
Frank – in the name of all the boobies in the world.
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