ALWAYS A LEARNING CURVE
When we first bought the modest bungalow in Hawaii, we knew nothing of life in the jungle..nothing. Within a month, the nightly excavations started. Inside the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom, I heard loud crunching, gnawing, excavation work. This occurred every night. Jim heard it too. We were puzzled. We asked friends. Everyone said "gecko". Surely not, I thought; that would have to be one heck of a monster gecko. I protested to friends that it was too loud to be a gecko. "Oh no, they can make a lot of noise", the answer came back. Eventually, I had a chance meeting with the excavation specialist as the cat sized Norway rat exited the house via the breeze-way to our carport.
The Terminex man offered a sympathetic smile and took up his personal crusade to trap the rat. When the moment came, I heard the sharp crack of the trap in the attic and the futile thumbing of limbs and body as the wretched rodent gasped it's last effort. I was not sad.
After six months, the Terminex contract lapsed and we lived happily, until......
Two days later, as I stood at the kitchen sink sleepily filling my electric kettle, I noticed a quarter sized hole in the kitchen window screen. It was right at eye level. "That was not there yesterday", I thought. "I couldn't have missed that". As I turned to the counter to plug in the kettle, I was flabbergasted to see half of a beautiful tomato, left out to ripen for the lunch salad, carved out, gouged away, gone! "What the heck..." But before I could finish my thought, Jim nonchalantly said, "Yeah, it's a gecko." Deja vu. "Gecko?!?!#!&!^!%, Surely not", I said. "That would have to be one heck of a monster gecko."
One of the problems that comes with having a very smart husband is that he is right most of the time, but not ALL of the time. He, understandably, is not always able to determine which times he's wrong. I am sometimes in a better position to make that assessment, but it can be politically awkward to do so. Eager to block the cute, little, hungry, green lizard, I made my way to Home Depot for new screen material, nails, and the array of supplementary hardware required to replace the screen for the entire window unit.
But the day had turned very rainy. Neither of us was eager to go out in the wet weather to climb up a ladder and remove the window unit. So, I just closed the glass window louvers to stop the breeze and the "gecko" and went to bed. Before I got past dozing, Jim exclaimed from the kitchen that the prowler was between the screen and the glass trying to get in. He said "It might be a mouse." When I arrived, I could see through the glass louvers, a foot long rope like thing sticking through the original hole in the screen. When I tapped the glass, the long tail whipped through the hole and into the night. Mouse, indeed!
The man from Horizon Pest Management arrived at 1:00 PM the next day to set rat traps. His exact words were, “This rat is going down tonight.” I LOVE the pest guy. He spent half the afternoon with us describing effective deterrents to the various critters that want to go where I don’t want them. We are likely to see him regularly as life evolves here.
It's a jungle out there,
CAP
Fall High Adventure 2008
For years I have been eyeing a prominent hunk of mountain overlooking the valley at the foot of Victoria Glacier. I figured it would offer an awesome view of the glacier and the famous Death Trap topped by the beloved Abbot Hut. This September at Fall High Adventure, I finally got there! Even our guide had never been up there, and the trail was severely overgrown. Here I stand on Pope's Prospect with veteran adventurer and professional photographer from Michigan, Cheryl Melamed. It was a thrill!