diff --git a/visidata/loaders/parquet.py b/visidata/loaders/parquet.py
index 9ee624c90..b9fcbbfc5 100644
--- a/visidata/loaders/parquet.py
+++ b/visidata/loaders/parquet.py
@@ -18,7 +18,8 @@ def iterload(self):
         pq = vd.importExternal("pyarrow.parquet", "pyarrow")
         from visidata.loaders.arrow import arrow_to_vdtype
 
-        self.tbl = pq.read_table(str(self.source))
+        with self.source.open('rb') as f:
+            self.tbl = pq.read_table(f)
         self.columns = []
         for colname, col in zip(self.tbl.column_names, self.tbl.columns):
             c = ParquetColumn(colname, type=arrow_to_vdtype(col.type), source=col)