**One day a Pirate was having a friendly chat with the Barkeep down at the alehouse.
The Barkeep inquired,
“Where did ya get that peg leg from?”
The Pirate responded,
“We were loadin’ the longboat with pillage, when I slipped overboard, and a monster of a shark came up to me afore me maties could haul me in and bit off some of me leg.”
The Barkeep asked,
“Well, where did you get that hook from, then?”
The Pirate replied,
“Well, me crew and I were in a fierce battle with some Spaniards, and their First Mate got me with a lucky chop of his cutlass afore I could run 'im through.”
The Barkeep then asked,
“Then where did ya get the eye patch from?”
The Pirate said “Whilst we was at anchor in the mouth of the Amazon, I heard a familiar squawk from the rigging above, and when I looked up, this parrot o’mine took a dump right in me eye.”
The Barkeep was puzzled and asked the pirate,
“Why would you need an eye patch just because a parrot took a dump in your eye?”
The Pirate half-stared back at him and said,
“Arrrrrgh! 'Twas me first day with the hook!”
**
Scary stories of cut-throat bandits of the high seas are that much scarier if the characters are horribly scarred or mutilated… they seem more dangerous.
Parrots were an exotic species from the lands that pirates visited. Sometimes they had monkeys. (The pirates, I mean.)