This Week's Wildlife

If you are a regular blog follower, you'll know that last week's wildlife story featured a show-down between "Team Corgyn" and a mongoose -- a pest especially prevalent here in Puna's thick forest and jungle.  Another wildlife creature we deal with, especially in the winter months, are Norwegian RATS!!

Emptying and resetting traps daily is part of our winter maintenance, faithfully administered by Phil.  So far this winter, our rat catch is up to over 20!

Rats originally got to the islands on 18th and 19th century sailing ships.  Once here, where they had no natural enemies, they flourished on the islands.  Since they are voracious eaters, they began to decimate the cane and pineapples fields, so the local American and European landowners imported Asian mongoose to kill them.  The only problem is that the rats are up at night and the mongoose are active during the day.  Now we have two pests!

Paul's Repair sent us this photo

Last week as we drove the truck for the weekly recycle and dump run, we notice the the fan made a rhythmic clacking sound -- similar to the sound made when we paper clipped cards to the spokes of our bikes as kids. We dropped the truck off a couple days later at our local auto repair guy who immediately suspected a rat nest.  And, sure enough, within an hour, he emailed us the following photo -- and said the filter and fan were clean and ready to go.


These prevalent rat episodes reminded us of a great story by a friend of ours whose stories in pidgin are well known and appreciated locally.  We met Jozuf Hadley in 2011 -- a year before we bought our house.  "Bradajo" as he is known locally, tells the story of the neighbor's cat "Ehu" who visits his house to catch rats -- and they all end up with a colorful encounter.  Hope you'll take time to click on this link to hear the story. Bradajo's "Ehu and da rat" story   (PS if you are new to Hawaiian Pidgin, you may need to listen again...but it is worth it.)

Holiday Story About the Rat

As we pulled out our Christmas decoration, we realized we had reduced the number of boxes for our relocation to Hawaii -- in fact, there was just one small box with a few strands of lights and only the most precious ornaments.  However, while doing so, we noticed a strange odor coming from the storage area, and the decorations were set aside until we found the source -- a dead rat.

Phil has been diligently putting rat poison out for a few days hoping to catch the "one" before they became "the many" -- unfortunately, the dying rodent managed to squeeze under the fully loaded freezer to find a place to die.

After successfully removing the carcass, we remembered a charming pidgin poem written (and performed) by our friend Jozuf Hadley -- about the cat "Ehu" and how effective "Ehu" was at catching 'da rat.' 


So, for your amusement and enjoyment, here's the link to BradaJo's reading "Ehu."
(just click on the link below)
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSGEtkVOLTk