Our first participant was at 11 a.m., but we are already double booked at night, so we'll come back and do her property tomorrow. She was extremely friendly, invited me in (I took my shoes off, of course- Hawaiian custom), and we chatted for a while. She has a very jungle-like property, but hardly any frogs, which makes it unique. This was my first time being invited into the home, as the other times we've sat and chatted on the porch or patio area. This was also my first time a participant gave me a hug. I guess she is a geek too, so she felt some sort of bond. I'm not the best at hugging strangers, though, so it was a bit awkward for me. Awkwardness aside, we go done with her property and headed off to have lunch before our next appointment at 3 p.m.
We drove down towards the ocean, figuring there might be a park or place to picnic. We ended up heading down a beach road, similar to where we are staying, and found a lava field that was undeveloped and looked like a good place to eat. We stayed for a couple of hours and explored, read, and relaxed. The views were gorgeous:
Our afternoon participant was super friendly as well. I was, once again, invited into the house to chat. I noticed a cow wall, with all sorts of cow figurines and asked them about it. I was told that I will like the more northern part of the island, as it is really rolling country up there, and they have more farming areas, so it will remind me of Wisconsin. They even had a Wisconsin cow from the time they flew to Minnesota to visit friends, and hopped across the border into WI. I guess they really want to visit during the winter and shovel some snow- any takers? They get snow here on the mountains, so it's not that they haven't seen it, but they haven't gotten to "play" in it as much as us more fortunate folks.
We filled up on water at the water fill station (most houses here use catchment water, ours is included), and then headed to our nighttime properties. The chickens and dogs were more annoying than the coqui at the second house we went to. People around here don't seem to treat their dogs very nicely. It seems they are nothing more than watchdogs, bred/raised to be vicious and unfriendly, chained up, and kept outside.
Today started off on an interesting note- we decided that Lew's help is no longer needed, so he will just be completing the two weeks of work, then hanging out and waiting for his family to come for their visit so he can just head out with them. This is definitely for the best from my standpoint, though it is still a shame that it had to happen. I learned a lot and know a lot I could have done differently, but that's still only half of the equation
Seth also saw the first centipede today in the house, and realized it takes a bit to kill them. Nasty little buggers!
Our first appointment was at 11 a.m. with a nice retired man from NY. We chatted for a while, and would get off on tangents every now and then, but, he doesn't mind the coqui, as it reminds him of countryside, and that's what he wants to live in. He took me and Seth through his backyard, which was mostly left unmanaged, except for a trail system he laid out a couple of years ago by hand. What a nice place to retire too! We finished our daytime data collecting and came back to the beach house, after picking up Lew from the market.
I worked on data transfer and getting all the equipment ready for the two properties we had at night and then made a stir fry with the yummy veggies we got at the market. We may get a fridge soon, as Seth chatted with a man who's taking care of the yard work, and he is starting a restaurant so has a bunch of extra refrigerators for the time being. I think we'll believe it when we see it, at this point.
We went back to do our sound recording on the two properties and frog counting, and got back close to 11. At our first property, we were out at the back of the lot when we heard the backyard neighbor's dog barking, and then had a bright light shining us. The rough and tough neighbor (so he thought) came over to see what we were up to. We told him, and I think he thought we were a little silly. I told the participant that he has good neighbors looking out for him, and he thought that was funny. The wife told me that the neighbor is a bit weird, as he killed a wild pig once that was in his yard, and then came over to these folk to see if it was theirs... after it was already dead. Yep. Interesting.
Today our participant wasn't until 5:30 p.m., so we mostly stayed and worked from home. I worked on revisions to a manuscript I'm co-authoring on the coqui frog, and Seth sat and read. Since we have a bag of flour and some yeast, I decided to try my hand at making some homemade pizza with the veggies we have on hand. In the meantime, a Mormon gentleman who was working to provide housing for Lew until his parents arrive visited us. Lew was gone during the day, so Seth chatted with this guy for a bit. It sounds like Lew's mom called and arranged through the church to find a place for him to stay. We think he may be leaving on Sunday, but it's hard to say, since he doesn't communicate really at all with me, and rambles about other things to Seth.
We headed out early for our participant so we could pick up the bug traps from the two properties the night before. The retired participant came out and wanted to know all about the bugs on his property. He was really sweet and almost seemed a little teary-eyed at our "nice meeting you, farewells". He gave me his contact info so I could stay in touch and update him on my progress. He also has my info and said he just may send some things along. The response I have been getting from participants has been great. All are extremely interested in what I'm doing, and want to keep in touch and see where I go with it. If that's not rewarding, I'm not sure what is.
We arrived at our participant's house a little early, and no car or person was around. We waited for a while, but no one showed up. We headed back to our beach house and decided to take a walk along the shoreline for a ways, and then head up along the government beach road until it was dark and we headed back. We'll need to head back out there during the daytime sometime to see if it heads out to a black sand beach.
Our first participant was at 7:45 a.m. here, which means leaving at about 7:15, since it takes about a half hour to get there. This participant was a real estate agent, and her husband a contractor born on Oahu. They were extremely friendly and interesting people. They had just as many questions for me as I did for them, which was fun. We talked for at least an hour, and then she came out and chatted as we were getting set up to take measurements. She asked if we'd be interested in some local free-range cattle from the other side of the island. They did some work for some ranchers and were paid in beef- all 800 lbs! We explained we'd be gone during the whole day, so we didn't have a way to keep it cool, but would love the special treat. She ended up loaning us her cooler and gave us two packs of the beef. We plan to have a bonfire on the beach and roast up some burgers over the weekend. Should be fun!
After this first participant, we drove north to Hilo to pick up some supplies at the stores and head to the field station. We also stopped by the library so Seth could pick up some more books. We stopped by King Kamehameha's park for a quick lunch before heading off to our second participant.
This participant was interesting because she seemed the least informed of anyone I had talked to thus far, though she didn't like the frogs. The property was easier to maneuver through than the morning one, where my body was a machete at times- not that much fun! We finished the daytime measures with a little over an hour to spare before we needed to start with nighttime measures, so we drove a little down the road and sat and read.
Nighttime measures went well, and we returned around 11 p.m. I transferred data and we went to sleep around 12:30.
Our participant today wasn't until 3:30 p.m. so I spent the day getting caught up on data entry from the previous day, and catching up with people. Seth continued reading. The participant wanted us to call him ahead of time to remind him. I called him around 1:00 p.m. or so, and he had forgotten the day was Friday, but was fine with us heading over. He rents the place from a woman who doesn't speak english, so he said he would translate for her what we were doing. The woman wasn't around, but he said it was still fine to come over.
We stopped by the two participant's properties from the day before to pick up insect traps. The second participant claimed that the frog she normally hears by the back window wasn't out last night. She wasn't sure if that was because we were around, or what. I told here we actually saw a couple of frogs that weren't calling, but I'm not sure she was convinced this was possible.
We arrived at our participant's place a little after 3:30 p.m. but no one came to the door. We tried knocking several times, dogs were barking, etc. so we figured the person heard us for sure, since his car was there. We were discussing what we should do next, when he finally came out about a half hour later. I guess he didn't hear us? He ended up being quite interesting, since he was from the Philippines originally, then moved to California to be an architect for 30 years, and now is retiring here and building a house in the friendlier community we were in last week. He told us all about some great places to eat, offered us mahimahi and ono, and showed us his dog's trick of singing (screeching is more like it...). When the owner of the house came home, he told us that he translated for us that we were his friends and we were doing research on the frog on the property. He introduced us, but she still looked a little apprehensive. We went about our business and after a few of the points the woman came out with the phone and tried handing it to Seth. He said that I should probably be the one to talk, so I did. It was the woman's son, who spoke perfect english. He was a bit testy at first, asking what was up, but as I started explaining, he sounded fine, and said that he didn't think he needed to come over and check it out like he previously was going to. He suggested we bring someone with us that speaks pidgin/the local language to help in situations like these. He gave me his sister's phone number as someone who might know other potential participants in the area, so it all ended up okay. He wanted to talk to his mom again, but she was royally confused and almost hung-up on him. I was able to get across that he was still on the phone and wanted to talk, but it wasn't easy.
A little bit later, this woman and another woman came out with a pad of paper and wanted us to write our names on it (the other woman spoke a few more words in english and could read). We wrote our name and phone number (local one) for them. They were going to write down the license plate number, but I said that it's not ours, we're borrowing it. They nodded and laughed, but I'm not sure they had a clue what I said, though they didn't write down the plate. Strange.
We went about our business and started our nighttime measures after talking more with the participant about all sorts of things. Right as we were about to start, we saw our first coqui of the night- in the truck! We don't know how it got in there, but it sure liked to leap around and stay in the truck
We also saw a snake at the first survey point. It's quite small, but is apparently the Brahminy blind snake, and it tends to hang out in gardens. Believed to have been introduced from the Philippines in the 1980s.
As we were finishing up, I was recording sound on my point, and a cop car drove past, then turned around right at the corner where I was standing. I thought for sure, "okay, I guess this is our next new adventure", but the cop didn't stop, so I'm not sure what was up there. One thing that was sad about this property was that the lady kept a dog leashed up in the corner of her yard that apparently has been there for 7 years (according to the renter), and he's called the humane society, but they can't do anything about it. This is fairly common throughout the island, and is also quite depressing. There were also a couple of puppies running around, full of energy, but not well cared for. They seemed to really like the attention they got from me and Seth.
Today started off on a new note; Seth was sitting on the computer and felt something crawling up his leg. It was a giant centipede! He remained calm, didn't move, and put a piece of paper against his leg so the centipede would crawl across it. It did, and he was able to quickly throw the sheet on the ground, then whack the thing until it was only moving a little (those things are hardy!). Then, when we were eating breakfast we heard what sounded like two mongoose fighting and the dog leapt off of the patio area into the woods to track them. Fun times!
We left for the Hilo market around 10:30 this morning. The market was pretty busy. I got a big bunch of bananas, some garlic, maui onions, brown sugar fruit, mango, wild mountain apples, lettuce, and some sweet corn. Seth bought himself a homemade filled doughnut while waiting for me to shop.
We decided to try and find a place to eat lunch since it was close to 12:30 and used the guidebook for a recommendation. We ended up at Cafe 100. The restaurant was listed as a local favorite, with food not for the health conscious- Seth was excited! He ordered a Kilauea Moco, and I ordered a garden burger moco, after asking for the vegetable moco and being told the vegetable was beef and broccoli... huh? The mocos were an interesting local choice, which I don't think we'll have again, but we were glad we tried. Seth's looked like a volcano (hence the name) with a pile of white rice, meat and beans, with sausages, spam, and 2 sunny-side up eggs. The serving was HUGE! This was the first time either of us tried spam (I had a nibble of Seth's) and it wasn't bad, if you are into that sort of thing! I should have taken a picture! Seth managed to finish most of his, while I didn't quite make it through mine, though it was noticeably smaller than his. Mine was basically a veggie burger, on top of the rice, and scrambled eggs on top. Normally it comes with beef gravy, but I opted out, since I AM supposed to be watching my cholesterol, but I think that was blown no matter what I ate there. We finished it off with a mango granita (slushy drink), which was quite refreshing. I love mangoes! We ate in the park behind the restaurant and could hear drum beatings from the adjacent pow wow that was going on this weekend.
From here we headed up to our next community and started going door to door to talk to people. The first couple of places were flops- the people either didn't really speak english, or were only willing to participate if we took the frogs and got rid of them.... not going to happen. So... we continued on. I managed to talk to a number of people, as this community seemed much friendlier (less gates, nasty signs, and nasty dogs). The people also seemed to care less about the coqui. Of course, the properties here are TINY compared to what we are used to sampling, so people may have less frogs on their property. One of the properties we talked to is 70 acres, which is the largest yet, though I'm not convinced that the owner will actually be there on Monday during the scheduled time, since the person that answered the door was probably an adult son who found me quite amusing with my large brimmed hat, sun shirt, and long hiking pants. We managed to get the number of participants lined up that I was hoping for, now we just have to hope they all show up. We have 2 scheduled for tomorrow, so we'll see what happens.
We headed back to Hilo and were going to go to the Tsunami museum, but it closed at 4:00 and it was after 3:30, so we'll do that another day, another time. Instead, we headed up to Rainbow Falls and the Boiling pots. There wasn't a rainbow at the rainbow falls this time, unlike when I went in February and saw a double rainbow (picture on the left). We did see some pretty cool banyan trees though:
The boiling pots were not boiling. I guess it is supposed to look like big pots of boiling water, at the base of Peepee falls (Seth loved this name, though I believe it is missing some glottal stops, so isn't pronounced how you'd think). They had a really pretty smelling flower on a tree there, which we both identified after smelling an hibiscus, and me getting hibiscus pollen on my nose...
We stopped by Banyan drive on our way back south, which is the area I stayed in February, and is adorned by banyan trees that were planted by many famous people and commemorated with signs. We drove past the queens park and then stopped at the end of it and sat and read for an hour or so.
We came back to our place expecting to build a bonfire on the beach and roast some of the beef given to us by participant number 11, but it was awful windy and a bit misty. We opted for the broiler and had a special treat, complete with Hawaiian blue beverage and roasted s'mores. Yum!
The participant from yesterday called and gave us the contact of a couple of people from his community who might be willing to participate, which is really helpful since that was the community that had all the fences and hostile looking places. We stopped by to pick up the insect traps on our way home, but didn't talk to the participant at all, though we will probably go there tomorrow or the next day to see who the potential other participants are.
Today was another day of firsts. During the morning I decided to walk around and survey the trees more carefully than I had in the past, since we have a ton of papayas ripening on 3 trees, and I was curious what other goodies we had around. I found several guava trees, one of which had ripe guava on it- yum! There are many small guava on the trees that will probably be ripe soon. We added a rake handle to a wood strip and Seth knocked the guava down while I caught it. Yum, yum! There is also several plumeria trees near us that always drop flowers after it rains, so I collected some of those as they smell really nice.
Our first participant was at 2:00 p.m. in the more northern community, so we left around 1 p.m. Before we left, Lew came by after church and headed to stay with the couple that took him to church. He's going to work on their house for them in return for staying with them until his parents come to vacation.
Our first participant was waiting for us in his garage area. The properties here are really small, so it wasn't as time consuming to survey the vegetation. However, he liked to talk. Specifically, he had a really interesting dream that he was telling me about. Jesus came to him and helped him find a cure for a particular disease from a particular organ, and two particular enzymes in the coqui frog. Wow! Haven't heard THAT story before yet. Based on a different dream he had that came true (not about the coqui), he feels there may actually be some truth to what he's saying, but he doesn't have time to pursue it. He's nervous someone else will steal the idea and make a mint and be famous. He's not religious, but his dad is, and I guess if he were more religious he might be more inclined to immediately try to follow his dream. He wondered, however, if I was also brought for a reason to talk with him. I guess you hear something new about the frog every day!
Our next participant was also interesting. She wanted to stand on her porch to be interviewed and then she followed us around. She had some choice words to say about Obama's color, and was clearly racist. It was difficult to remain indifferent when chatting with her. She also was quick to call me a haole (pronounced "how-lee") and ask where my relatives are from. We have heard haole a lot, but normally people are telling us that there are parts of the island that haoles should not really be going, as they are not welcomed there. This all relates back to Hawaii forcibly being made a state, and some participants have even said it goes as far as fueling the frustration over the coqui frog.
I saw a land planarian (worm) on her property that looked like a hammerhead:
When we went back at night to do the sound measures and frog counting, there was a big party happening near the first property, and one very angry person. Half the time he was yelling into his phone, the other half we weren't sure if he was having an altercation with someone at the party, or what. It was a little bit too close to us for comfort. There was also a dog wandering around, so Seth carried the machete with him for protection. We saw LOTS of frogs in the banana trees on the first property, and in the orchids on the second property.
We stopped by a grocery store on the way back to get some more ice and some sweets and a bottle of sake for later. All in all, it was an interesting day.