It was a weekend in June—glorious weather for boating. A small cabin cruiser with Double-Six freshly painted on the sternboard chugged across the lake at a cautious speed.
Stowed on the aft deck were suitcases, cartons, a turkey roaster without handles, and a small wire-mesh cage with a jacket thrown over the top.
“They’re quiet!” the pilot yelled above the motor noise.
The passenger, a man with a large moustache, shouted back, “They like the vibration!”
“Yeah. They can smell the lake, too!”
“How long does it take to cross?”
“The ferry makes it in thirty minutes! I’m going slow so they don’t get seasick!”
The passenger lifted a sleeve of the jacket for a surreptitious peek. “They seem to be okay!”
Pointing across the water to a thin black line on the horizon, the pilot announced loudly.
“That’s our destination! . . . Breakfast Island, ahoy!”
“YOW!” came a piercing baritone from the cage.
“That’s Koko!” the passenger yelled. “He knows what “breakfast” means!”
“N-n-NOW!” came a shrill soprano echo.
“That’s Yum Yum! They’re both hungry!”
The cabin cruiser picked up speed. For all of them it was a voyage to another world.
Breakfast Island, several miles from the Moose County mainland, was not on the navigation chart. The pear-shaped blip of land—broad at the south end and elongated at the northern tip—had been named Pear Island by nineteenth-century cartographers. Less printable names were invented by lake captains who lost ships and cargo on the treacherous rocks at the stem end of the pear.
