Dog is out of food and fridge still hasn't been replaced. It sounds like a couple of people are in charge of feeding the dog, but so far, neither has provided. Today was cleaning day- everyone's favorite! There's something about cleaning a place that isn't even yours that makes it even harder to do, but man this place looked a lot better after we tackled it! We've (maybe just "I've") been cleaning as we've been here, but not done as much of a thorough deep clean like today. We had to rush to head out to our first appointment at 1, since it was in the community north of Hilo (Papaikou). The woman wasn't very chatty, but did mention that it's hard to really support spraying in such condensed housing situations, as you can't really control where the spray will go. Her yard was quite small, and we only had one plot to survey from.
The next property was going to be 70 acres, but the owners didn't show. A house caretaker answered the door and didn't know when the owners would be back. We waited around for a bit, after I gave her a card with my contact info so the owners could get in touch if they still wanted to participate. This didn't surprise me, as the gentleman I spoke to a couple of days ago was likely the son of the owner, and Seth and I heard a rather annoyed woman's voice when he went back in, asking what I wanted. Not to mention, the other side of their house(s) (seems they had multiple..) had a gate with a no trespassing sign, so if we had gone in from that side, we wouldn't have surveyed anyways.
We sat at a nearby park for a while reading, until Seth finished his book. I needed to find the phone number for the participant a couple of days ago who knew someone else interested in participating. We drove to look for a phonebook and ended up outside of Baker Tom's little bakery. Happy coincidence, terrible misfortune? I guess you'll have to decide, but he is well known for his cheesecakes and malsadas. We salivated while he talked to the customers ahead of us for a while, but that was nothing compared with the chat with us. Apparently his malsadas and turnovers and some savory treats are half off after 3 p.m. and we were there at 4, so this was an added bonus. He asked if we'd been by before, and I explained we'd been driving past, and talked with someone the other day about coquis who worked for him. He then launched into mostly a soliloquy about the coqui frog, and how a particular candidate for state elections is using the coqui as their platform, and really ONLY the coqui, and doing quite well, even though they mention less about more important issues. From there, the discussion spiraled into a discussion of Bin Laden.... and Seth thought I got off on tangents.... Anyways, the treats were delicious (we tried the lilikoi malsada, a chocolate bar, and lilikoi cheesecake), and both because of this, and because Tom was so interesting, we know we'll have to visit again and learn more about this skinny, partially toothless man, who would have kept talking for ages, but more customers showed up raving about his malsadas. So much for watching ones cholesterol this summer! At least we checked a couple more firsts off of our lists: eating lilikoi cheesecake and lilikoi malsadas- yum!
Our one property was really easy, and even with the 1 hour drive back here we got home relatively early. When we arrived, we knew someone had been here as the dog now had 100 lbs of food (yay!) and the fridge had been plugged in again. There were a couple of messages on the machine from the landlady's friend telling us she was coming over and then calling after she'd been here. Guess she thought the fridge was working (like we had) because it runs, but unless you open it, you don't realize it's not cooling. Oh well, maybe one of these days we'll have a working fridge. Until then, block ice seems to work well!
Our participant today was back in the second community we surveyed, at 2:00 p.m. We enjoyed the rest of the meat given to us in some yummy tacos with homemade tortillas. We arrived at the property and the owner had forgotten, which I was afraid of, since we scheduled it 10 days prior. After a little bit of running around between him and his brother, we decided to do the daytime veg measures and come back for the night time measures and interview him then.
We needed to head north to pick up the flying bug trap on the property from the day before, and, of course, we had to stop and get some more malsadas. We got there after 5, so of course we took advantage of the two for one deal. The flavors we tried this time were peanut butter and jelly, cinnamon raisin, blackberry, and strawberry cheesecake. All were delicious! We chatted with Baker Tom for quite some time and learned the mystery of the missing teeth. Apparently he was walking along in Alaska (where he's from) and someone hit him with his or her car, he was caught on the back of the car, drug a ways, and then the driver just took off. It sounds like he was lucky to be alive, but definitely had injuries to show for it. At the time, he was a baker for a Hilton in Alaska, but wanted to move to Hawaii to be closer to his parents in their "golden years". I guess the Hilton in Hawaii offered him a chef position, but it was a step down from baker and he wasn't interested in that same lifestyle. It sounds like he's also worked to try and help people become self-sufficient, but had problems with them becoming moochers instead. Our chatting was concluded when another customer came by, but we told him we'd be by again, though it would probably be healthier for us if we didn't.
Despite some barking dogs, the nighttime measures were pretty standard. The homeowner didn't know what he could be doing to prevent the frogs from getting worse, but he wanted help. Not sure if he's just uninformed, or confused about messages already being sent to help people.
Our participant was scheduled for 9 a.m. this morning, and he was as friendly as when we met 10 days ago. We chatted for a bit about the frogs and got started on mapping out his 3-acre property. He just moved in 7 months ago, and is planning to put grass and plants down where there is just cinder now, so it is likely the frogs will get even worse for him. Today was the first day we got rained on a little bit while collecting data on the property. It was a really light rain, but it aided in fern fuzz sticking all over us, which wasn't that welcomed. Seth got creative and made himself a giant umbrella..
Of the many hazards we have when working on a property, curious dogs are one of the more interesting. Seth had a bit of a struggle with the tape measure, since this german shepherd wanted to help us measure out 5 m.
As we were walking to one of our randomly selected points on the property, Seth was stopped by a runner asking what he was up to, since he was carrying the large checkerboard. Seth explained the study and when I got there I started chatting and explaining the project and we ended up recruiting another participant-score! Since his property was also 3 acres, we decided it would make sense to schedule him for another day, rather than tonight as we had previously talked about, otherwise we'd be up counting frogs long after they stopped calling... We ended up doing the interview today, since the running guy's mom works on weekends, which is when we'll be coming back, most likely. They were and interesting pair from Michigan who know one of the nursery people that first brought the frog over in a shipment from Puerto Rico.
We decided to have a little fun for the rest of the afternoon before we needed to be back, so we headed to the Volcano winery, which is right by Volcano National Park. We tried all 6 of the very unique wine flavors: guava, volcano red, macadamia nut honey, and symphony grape wines. The woman was from Colorado originally, and since we were going to be here this summer, she gave us the 20% discount for locals (kama'aina), so we decided to get one of each. Should be nice whenever we have any nights off! This area of Hawaii seems to have people that are often trying to control for the frogs, as they have a sign up about coqui watch and the winery worker told us that the people are very active with spraying and trying to control the frogs
From here, we headed to the lava tube and the Kilauea Iki hike at Volcanoes National Park. We brought our headlamps with us, so we were able to explore the extra 334 meters of the lava tube that isn't lit up and as well traveled. We went to the end, turned off our lights, and darkness surrounded us. It's neat to see roots coming through the lava and water dripping through. Some of the small rock piles make you wonder how long ago the piles formed, and what will make another one occur. A few spots look like people had mini fires towards the back, but otherwise, no one was around.
The Kilauea Iki trail was a nice hike. I was here in February with a labmate, but the skies were a bit clearer this time, and the breeze was really nice. The views were gorgeous. The eruption took place almost 50 years ago in 1959 and lasted for a number of days, with lava shooting about a 1/4 of a mile out of the crater! A sign along the trail indicated that there were often long traffic jams to get to view the eruption and that people would shield themselves from the cinder with umbrellas, newspapers, and books. Are those things really going to work that well??
We hadn't really eaten anything for lunch, and by now it was dinnertime. We decided to stop by the Kiawe Kitchen, which was where we were going to go for Seth's birthday, but they weren't open for dinner service at the time we got there. We had a Margherita pizza and Sausage cavatapi. Both were good, especially on empty stomachs, but the pizza crust was only crisp on the outer edge and we expected it to be crisp all the way through from the stone oven it was cooked in. All together, a bit overpriced, but decent food.
We made a dash for the property to get the sound recorders set up, and then we headed back to the property from yesterday to pick up the insect traps. The property ended up taking us only about 2.5 hours, which was less than we estimated, so it wasn't terrible. I didn't have to use my human machete skills as much as during the daytime, but the unmanaged areas were still thick and not the most fun to walk through. I saw a non-calling juvenile frog, and we both heard lots of frogs.
On our way out, we saw the gentleman who was supposed to be dropping off a fridge, and he mentioned that the truck he was going to use to haul it over here had a flat, but the painter had a smaller fridge they could bring over tomorrow. We said that sounded great and headed out, joking as to whether we would actually ever see a fridge before we left....
Our first appointment was scheduled for 1 p.m. in the northern community, but I was supposed to call as a reminder. I left a message and assumed the person would be there, as he told me he had a doctor's appointment in the morning. We arrived and there was a minor fiasco to find the participant, and his wife sounded annoyed with him. When he was finally found, I started talking with him again, and was going over the standard consent form that all participants have to sign before we can begin. After I got done with my schpeal, he said he needed to show to his wife before he signed. I said that was fine, so we went back up to where she was and she yelled at her husband "now what?!" as I think she was in the middle of watching a tv show or movie and she kept getting interrupted. I heard them speak some Japanese to each other and he came out and said he needed to wait for his son before he could sign. I asked when that would be and he said he didn't know since his son is quite busy working at the hospital. I asked if there was something I could explain better, since he was the first that wasn't signing, and he just said that the property is for his son, so I guess he was concerned that we were going to do something with it that the son might not like? I'm not really sure, since he said several times that we could do everything that's needed for the study, but without the signature. I said we can't do that and asked that he call when he's able to talk with his son. So.... we were without a participant, and I was frustrated at yet another new experience. We tried knocking on the door for our Friday participant, since she had told us she worked from home, but her car wasn't there, so we didn't luck out. We decided to explore a part of this community we hadn't yet, and try to recruit more participants.
The first house we stopped at ended up being the only one we stopped at, as he agreed to participate. He and his family all lived next door, and he had lived there when the area was still a plantation. His theory for how the frogs got to his part of the community had to do with the transfer station (garbage dump) and the church next door. The frogs were bad at the transfer station for a long tie, and he suspects that people would drive to the transfer station, drop off their garbage, then head next door to church. Meanwhile, a few coquis hitchhiked on their cars and then had free roam of the new area. Probably a fairly likely scenario, considering we know they move easily on cars.
I had some insect traps I ordered a month ago finally show up at the field station in Hilo, so we decided to pick those up and head to the library as well. We spent the rest of the time waiting for it to get dark while reading at a nearby park (our hangout this past week). We treated ourselves to a Hawaiian milkshake from the icecream joint across from the library, and ate it at the scenic overlook of Hilo Bay.
This property had rats and a really large spider. We think that the spider is a cane spider (aka Brown Huntsman). No worries, it sounds like it doesn't really pose much of a threat, though we attempted to not get in its way just to be on the safe side.
We slept in the latest we have so far, and got up just in time for a fridge to be dropped off. Yay! It is one of those smaller fridges, but that's all we need to keep things cool and is much better than the styrafoam cooler. Our participant was scheduled for 2 p.m. and we were a little late from heading out, but it ended up okay, since she was on the phone anyways. She had two adorable dogs. One lhasa apso/part maltese (looked like Max, but more spunky because she was only 1.5 years old), and the other a 6 week old chocolate lab. The lhasa ended up staying with them because it chased it's tail (which I watched) and the previous owner's dad was a marine and said they would not keep a dog that chased it's tail..... so...
This participant was pretty interesting. She was into more natural remedies and had just moved here recently. The yard was only big enough to barely squeeze in one of our 10 meter plots, but we ended up hearing quite a few frogs in that plot. After we were packing up and getting ready to head out, the woman's male friend came and chatted with us and invited us in for tea. We decided we might as well, so we ended up chatting for an hour or so. He was really interested in the frogs and my research. He works with a group interested in water quality issues in Hawaii, and he suggested we try to sit in on their meeting on Tuesday. He was really interested in general information on the frogs, as he hadn't heard any of it before. He described himself as someone interested in science, but not a scientist, but hangs out with scientists and works at a medical facility (I believe). At one point, he worked for the correctional facility on the island and participated in a project designed to keep feral pigs out of Volcano National Park by building a fence. Labor is really expensive here, so they ended up using inmates, which worked quite well. One of the few success stories here with invasives (though it just prevented the pigs from going to the park, but not places around it..)
We were glad we went in and chatted with them. They were really friendly and all seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. The woman was from Ohio, and he was from Texas originally. He has a 10 acre farm and is willing to let us on the property, but it isn't in one of my randomly selected communities, so we'll hold off for now. It really has been neat meeting people on the island. It's such an interesting way to get to meet people, too. Sure, we meet people at the markets when we go, but to get to sit and really chat with these people about the coqui, and then often off on tangents about other topics is really great. We've still been in contact with one of our other participants who is still trying to help recruit more participants for us, which is super nice of him.
Seth suggested celebrating the fridge with some icecream, so we stopped by a grocery store on the way back, even though it was a little late. So far, so good with the fridge.
While eating breakfast on the front porch area, I saw a large bird of prey, and went to get a closer look. From what I could tell, it looked like a Hawaiian hawk. Pretty cool!
Today was our "drive to the next community and recruit more participants day" (aka my least favorite day of the week). On our way north, we decided to drive along the beach road since it connects up with a road we normally drive past. Not too far down the road (approx. 0.5 mile) we came across a group of people standing outside of their truck. It is basically a one-lane road except in some areas where it is a little wider. We pulled up to their truck and they asked if we could give them a jump. Seth asked what was up and they explained that they thought they had a short of some kind. We attempted to jump them, but it didn't work. They asked if we really wanted to head the direction they were blocking, and we said we did, so they pushed the truck a short ways to a wider part of the road so we could pass. When they asked if we knew how far the end of the road was, Seth responded by saying not far, and that we are living just down the way. They seemed shocked that someone lived out this way, but Seth thought it was more that they thought we lived out in the jungle, not in a house. We continued on our way and realized that these people were also riding on ATVs, which makes sense, because there were more of them than seats in the truck. They told us they had called a friend, so they thanked us for trying and sent us on our way. Along the drive I had Seth stop a couple of times as I spotted ripe guava- yum! The drive was quite pretty.
We first stopped by the community we were at the previous week in order to recruit a couple more participants. The first two (and only two) people we talked to said yes, so we were all set! The second lady showed me some frogs her husband had frozen, so I figured they were going to be an interesting interview.
We headed up to Honokaa, which is on the north part of the east side of the island. We started chatting with people and were told that the coqui are no longer really in this area. Since we got a bit of a late start, we only recruited a little over half of the participants I was aiming for. However, if there aren't frogs here, we may not need to do nighttime measures, which saves us some time. I'm still figuring out the details on what makes the most statistical sense.
We didn't want to disrupt people's dinners, so we started our trek back to our apartment. Along the long drive back (about 2 hours one way), we saw a car on fire. We could see the smoke in the distance, so we knew something was on fire, but it was only once we got close that we realized the fire was right along the road. There were plenty of gawkers and the car looked pretty well toasted when we went past. There was a mini explosion when we drove past, which we think resulted from a can of something pressurized in the car. Seth accused me of being the paparazzi, but I guess you don't see something like this every day. I was nervous, though, so the pick isn't that great.
After that incident, we decided to stop by and visit Baker Tom and get some more tasty half-price malsadas. This time we sampled pineapple, blueberry, banana, and haupia (coconut, though he gave us lilikoi by mistake). We stopped by a park in Hilo and ate the yummy, oh-so-bad-for-you treats, and then headed back to our apartment. We tried the lychee sake and relaxed by watching a pbs series on the navy for the rest of the evening.
It's June! Wow, where has the time gone?! Our first participant was tentatively scheduled for 11 a.m. but he requested we call to check his schedule first. I requested we come at 11:30 and he said that was fine. We ended up sampling two points from his property, and chatted with a very curious neighbor who knew someone that lost their African Grey Parrot. This participant was curious why local folk weren't doing research similar to mine (not an uncommon question) and I explained that much of the focus in Hawaii is how to get rid of the frogs, but not so much on what the frogs might actually be doing to the environment, etc. He was from Oahu originally, but said he likes this island much more, and we couldn't agree further.
Our next participant was really interesting. He was a middle school science teacher, so was totally enthused by going out on his property and catching things. He grows coffee and cocoa, which was neat to be shown (and to try samples!). He told me that I got him motivated to try some experiments of his own, and he plans to test out different concentrations of tea made from his coffee grinds to see its effectiveness. They told us to make ourselves at home, but we decided to head to the park where we normally hang out, after sampling some coffee.
The first property was rather uneventful at night, though we did see a number of cockroaches and worms on both sites, and Seth saw a frog hanging out in the grass. The neighbor lady also came over to visit briefly.
The second property was action packed. Not only were there lots of frogs, but there were also tons of other creatures around. We saw at least 5 different kinds of spiders, rats, lots of centipedes, millipedes, anoles, skinks, and other creatures including a very well loved dog. The owner was out hunting slugs with his trusty scissors, and demonstrated their effectiveness on a slug and a centipede. Those centipedes are nasty creatures; it took 3 cuts before it even seemed to really notice. Seth walked extremely cautiously around the property and eliminated a number of centipedes with a pole. Even though it started to rain a little bit on us towards the end, things still went really well.