Treasure

A pirate was searching for his buried his treasure. “This,” he told his parrot, “is why one makes a map.”
 
He knew he preferred to bury his treasure on deserted islands, where there was less chance of it being discovered. Also, he liked to dig under palm trees. The whole thing was a bit clichéd — but so was the notion of “X marks the spot,” and what he wouldn’t have given for a timely X.
 
The first island they anchored at looked familiar. When the pirate dug under the one palm tree, he discovered a buried chest, but it was the wrong chest. This chest was filled with gold dinner plates.
 
“Nice, right?” he asked the parrot.
 
“Very nice,” the parrot agreed.
 
On the second island there were no palm trees, so the pirate counted ten paces from the shore, which, if it wasn’t a lucky number, did have a nice, round quality to it. Where the pirate dug he discovered a second buried chest, this one filled with a variety of jewels.
 
“Pretty,” said the parrot.
 
“Very pretty,” the pirate agreed.
 
He couldn’t quite remember what he was looking for. He could recall the day he’d buried it: it had rained, but the kind of rain you ultimately enjoy, either because it’s already humid or you’ve resigned yourself to getting wet (or both). The pirate had buried his treasure in the morning and had taken a nap in the afternoon, the perfect kind of nap, which leaves a person refreshed and not feeling at all groggy. It had been an excellent, unspectacular day.
 
“Why don’t you bury something?” suggested the parrot. “That always improves your mood.”
 
So the pirate did. He took off his jewelry and emptied his pockets and put everything in a hole in the ground. “You should make a map,” said the parrot, but the pirate didn’t feel like making a map, which was time-consuming, and, anyway, his maps were notoriously poor representations — laughably poor. The parrot rolled his eyes. This always happened.