I'm no biologist, but I've always found myself fascinated by wildlife. I like to keep my eyes open for unusual creatures I've never seen before and might want to brag about later, provided I'm not talking to somebody who sees a lot more animals than me. While visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Montana we pulled up alongside a pair of buffalo in Yellowstone that looked big enough to overturn the car. When we got back to Mammoth Springs an hour later, we snapped some pictures of a herd of elk that had decided to lounge on the grass next to the gift shops, a practice I hear they make a habit of there. Another time in Montana, some years earlier and on my way to Arizona, I spotted a black bear bolting from an abandoned tool shed like a sprinter while riding in the passenger seat of my sister's car.
As for Arizona, it was home to a lot of things I'd never seen outside of a zoo: several types of lizards that skittered along the sidewalks and up walls much too fast to ever get a picture of--most around six or seven inches long, though on a few occasions, out of the corner of my eye, I'd catch sight of some much larger; four different praying mantises, in particular a big green one that hung around our apartment complex for a couple of days and had the uncanny ability, native to all mantises I think, to turn its head on its neck-stalk and look directly at you; and my one and only wild rattlesnake sighting in the four years we lived in Tucson, on our wedding day, watching its hind end gradually inching its way down a hole in the shadow of a boulder, at the park where we were to be married an hour later. Random sightings of strange-looking, weird, rare, or dangerous creatures are always a highlight for me, as long as I can maintain a safe distance from the ones that bite and kill.
Prior to coming to Hawai'i, Hannah and I engaged in several phone conversations with our future host Janice. Among the questions about accommodations, supplies, the type of work we'd be doing, I decided to ask, “What kind of animals are there on Hawai'i?”
That's a very broad question, I know. And not the real question I wanted to ask. What I really wanted to know was, “Are there dangerous animals on Hawai'i?” The answer was important for a couple of reasons:
There is still in me a seven-year-old boy who is morbidly intrigued by creatures that can do bodily harm to a human being, the same seven-year-old who spent hours hunting through the TV Guide for specials on man-eating sharks and piranha (years before they invented the Discovery Channel and simplified the procedure). I remember one nature film in particular that luridly detailed the process by which army ants in South America attacked prey en masse, some as large as a monitor lizard, and hollowed them out from the inside, even nesting inside the carcass. I can't attest to the accuracy of the film's claims; I can only attest to the unyielding attention I paid to them.
The other reason I considered the question important is that I didn't want to die horribly from some kind of insect/arachnid/reptile-related misadventure. You can blame TV for that, too.
There's a two-part episode of the Brady Bunch in which the Bradys go on a Hawaiian vacation (I think the second Brady movie from the '90's parodied this episode). One plot-point involves a little tiki idol worn around the neck that is allegedly cursed. Greg wears it while surfing and almost drowns. One of the other brothers, I can't remember whether it's Bobby or Peter, wears it while taking a nap, and while he sleeps, a big hairy tarantula crawls up on his chest. End of part one. I think we were supposed to worry that he'd get bitten and die. Anyone who knows anything about tarantulas knows that's very unlikely unless you're deathly allergic to spider venom. Little Bobby or Peter (actually, not so little, since by that point in the show's run both characters are supposed to be in high school) stood a better chance of dying from a brown recluse bite looking for an old catchers mitt in the garage.
So in some childish, obsessive part of my mind, I imagined a similar scenario (the spider part, not the wiping out while surfing part) playing out during our stay on the island. Janice informed me that the only creatures one needs to be concerned about are centipedes, which she said can grow to about six inches long and are capable of delivering a painful bite that might require taking it easy for a couple of days.
Oh. Really, centipedes? Yuck. Still, I've seen the ones on TV from southeast Asia that get like a foot long and can kill a human being with one bite, so these don't sound so bad. Not that I want to get bitten by one, or anything else for that matter, but a painful bite is light years from death.
She also told me a little about wild pigs. They're kind of a nuisance on the island, especially in gardens. That might be part of the reason they're hunted so enthusiastically. Various sources have told us that hunters use dogs to hold the pigs down by their legs and ears. In some cases, they castrate the males and let them go so they'll grow fat for the time they're caught again and slaughtered, often by cutting the animal's throat.
Around ten o'clock one evening we heard the sound of a dog growling viscously, as if in a fight with another dog. Seconds later there came the loud, piercing squeals of a pig sounding as if it were in terrible pain or distress. They continued for several minutes and then gradually weakened, tapered off, and eventually stopped altogether. I came to the conclusion that its throat had been cut and that we had been privileged to listen to its last, dying cries, just in time for bed. Sleep tight.
Wild pigs are also aggressive, something we were able to get a sense of during one visit to Elmer's farm.
“Did you smell the pig on the way in?” he asked.
“What pig?”
“The pig I caught in my trap last night. Want to see it?”
Of course we wanted to see it. He led us back through the bushes and ironwoods to a cage, a live trap. Inside was a decent-sized, hairy pig, very dark brown in color, almost black. As soon as it saw us, it slammed its head against the bars as if attempting to charge, and continued to do so, hard enough to do damage to a human if it managed to make contact, as Elmer explained to us that it was a female and that the piglet was more than likely still roaming around somewhere nearby.
His brother was coming over to pick it up in his truck and slaughter it. Janice had gone to the farm with us, and an hour later asked us if we wanted to see Elmer's brother hog tie the pig to haul it away. We declined, though I kind of regret not taking the opportunity. I'm of the opinion that if you're going to eat meat, you should see at least some of the process by which it comes to be on the plate.
As with much of the fauna here, they're not strictly native. Hawaii is a case study of the perils of introducing non-native species to an environment. Mongoose and tropical frogs also proliferate here, both brought with the intention of waging inter-species war and subsequently leading to new problems. Trade to the islands brought rats, and in an attempt to eradicate the rats, people brought mongoose. They had been used, apparently with some success, to catch rats in Indian cane fields.
Maybe that was just a rumor, because as it turned out, mongoose hunt in the daytime for the most part, and rats tend to be nocturnal. The two species seldom come in direct contact. What mongoose do come into a lot of contact with are the eggs of native bird species--which have been reduced as a result--and on occasion people's pets and small livestock such as chickens.
For a little while I thought we never saw any. Turns out I was wrong. The small, light-brown animals we'd see crossing the road as we made our way up to the highway for water, about the size of big rats, running singly or in pairs for the cool green cover of the guinea grass, were not the rats I had thought. They are mongoose, smaller than I believed they would be (not that I had any prior experience to base that belief on), but still capable of doing damage all the same.
As far as rats go, I've seldom seen any that weren't already dead by cat or automobile (although I did see one scurry out of a pile of garbage and spook a woman on a street in Manhattan). I've never been especially scared of them, though I'm not fond of the idea of having them crawl all over me...
...as I nearly did about a week ago. I woke in the early morning hours, dark except for a thin sheen of moonlight, to the sound of something clawing its way up the foot of the bed. Not fully awake, I hadn't formed a mental picture of what could be doing it until I felt a cold, twitchy nose sniffing at my bare toes.
Yanking my legs up as if they'd been burned, I jostled Hannah out of her sleep.
"What is it ?"
"There's a rat in the bed!"
I panicked. I grabbed a flashlight from the table next to the bed and swept the light over the room. Nothing. The rat was gone. For all the noise it had made before, it had escaped with the stealth of a ninja. I got up and spent the next ten minutes looking for it or one of its cohorts. Still nothing. I put on some socks (if another one tried the same thing, at least it wouldn't be touching my bare feet. And besides, my feet were cold) and reluctantly went back to bed, sleeping only fitfully until sunup.
Continued in part II...
