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| Mari watched this happen during our breakfast yesterday. Its a Gecko-eat-Lizard world around here. |
When Mari and I were at the Flea Market in Ocean View last Saturday I met a woman who was singing the praises of the French Fries the local Thai Food vendor made. I was so impressed I ordered some too. While were waiting I asked a few questions about her house. She lives at the Ocean View Ranchos. Those are houses built on 3-acre lots between the highway and the ocean. She choose one that isn't up too high so she wouldn't have so many steps to climb. "But, she added, the higher you lift them up off the ground the fewer problems you have with critters. getting in."
I didn't pursue the critter issue with her, but I have learned more about it. One of the critters you don't want to mess with around here is the centipede with the poisonous bite.
There are 3 common centipedes here. The one with the poisonous bite is said to have a brown head and a dark green body. Its bite can send you to the hospital.
Stories about encounters with centipedes abound. Just Google "Hawaii Centipedes" and you can entertain yourself for hours reading about people's encounters with them.
Here is one such account:
"My daughter, Priscilla, can kill a centipede with a butcher knife or scissors all by herself. She is an adult with children who are looking to her for protection -- if Daddy is at work -- when a centipede crawls into the livingroom. But if her husband, Daniel, is home she grabs the biggest knife she can find and hands it to him when one of these fast-slithering creatures from hell enters the family domain. Daniel then has the honor of hacking the thing in half. Then he cuts it in quarters.
Just the other night Priscilla and I were talking on the telephone. Her husband was at work. All of a sudden, Priscilla screamed. I could hear her panic and fast breathing plus muted words and sounds for about two minutes. "Priscilla, Priscilla?" I said. I had heard her say the word centipede so I knew it wasn't a human intruder, but a centipede situation. Finally she came back on the line. She said there had been a centipede in the kitchen. She hadn't seen it and had accidentally stepped on it but luckily got her foot free before the thing attacked. She grabbed the kitchen tongs and picked the creature up, got it outside and hacked it up. (I am glad she took it outside to do this -- this time -- because recently I heard that the scent of a cut up centipede brings more centipedes to the area.)
Centipedes don't stop moving just because you cut them up. They fight to the end. They look like they are coming to get you! That's because they are coming to get you! Their pinchers are still pinching for several minutes after the body is lying in pieces, writhing on the floor. Daniel has pestered a sliced-up centipede after the execution and by poking a pencil at the pinchers has found that a centipede can keep up the attack mode for six minutes after being sliced into four pieces. This is information that, hopefully, you will never need. And as I mentioned, my daughter is capable of carrying out the execution on a centipede herself. She does not back away (or stand on the table and scream for help) if her husband is not home when the centipede is discovered in their condo. She says it actually gives her a feeling of confidence to know that she is now capable of doing this herself whenever necessary. I will never know that feeling of confidence, but that's okay."
Not everyone recommends killing centipedes. Many recommend just throwing them outdoors. After all, they eat the cockroaches, which can get big around here. Mari saw one the other day, down in the laundry area under the house that was 2 inches long.
Here is a note I sent to the owner of the house we are staying in a few days ago:
"I just took a centipede and some other worm-like thing out of the first floor tub. Ants are coming in through the kitchen window. My wife found one of those large cuban cockroaches in the laundry last night and a dead cockroach on the kitchen floor just a few minutes ago."
Here was his response:
"LOL we are living on their island! "
"Things happen really really really slow here I have been waiting for Terminix to call me back for a month. The only things that sting are the centipedes everything else is ugly but harmless."
So, I was discussing the critter situation with a person we have met here. She stopped by yesterday to say hi. She said that when she cleans her house she never moves or lifts anything, especially if its in a corner.
Pigs: If you hear sounds at night, its likely the pigs looking around your house for food.
"...with their boundless appetites and unchecked fertility, Eurasian feral pigs, Sus scrofa, are the worst of the worst. These are not the little Asian domesticated pigs that Native Hawaiians farmed for centuries, but descendants of the big European swine that started getting loose and going native after Captain Cook put Hawaii on the map in 1778.
“They rototill the planet,” Dr. David Duffy, a biology professor at the University of Hawaii, told me. On my visit in February, he and Dr. Thane Pratt, an authority on Hawaiian forest birds, explained the problem. Feral pigs eat native plants and, through their scat, spread invasive ones like the forest-clotting strawberry guava. Indirectly, they slaughter birds — the stagnant, mucky wallows they dig breed mosquitoes that carry avian malaria.
Their only redeeming trait is that they are delicious,"
Here's a news article from the next town south of where we are staying:
"Wild pigs are becoming a problem in Mililani Mauka. They’re going into people’s yards and destroying property.
The normally quiet subdivision has been disturbed lately with the loud snorts of feral pigs, looking for something to eat.
“I’ve seen them at night, early in the morning, midday. Like right now, they might come walking through,” said resident Andrew Deal.
Residents sent us video and said the pigs are getting more accustomed to being around people, so it’s not unusual to find them out roaming on the street or even on their properties.
They say they’ve seen as many as 17 at one time, and are usually feeding on their plants.
“It was covered. The whole rock was covered with that plant, but now (there’s barely any) left,” said resident Miyo Deal.
A trail has been formed by wild pigs coming up from the gulch and straight into people’s yards.
Mililani Town Association’s general manager, Dave O’Neal, says they can do more than just damage your property.
“Within the last year in Mililani Pines, a boar actually attacked got trapped in a homeowner’s yard and gouged a man in his leg and had to go to the hospital so they can definitely be dangerous,” he said.
After KHON2 told him about the recent complaints, O’Neal called the Pig Hunters Association of Oahu.
“They might be after the pet’s food sprinklers, go to the water source. It’s a multitude of different things that could be drawing the pigs here,” said vice president Mitchell Tynanes.
Tynanes says wild pigs start getting braver at residential areas in search of food and water. He says he can set up what’s known as a pen trap with enough room to hold several pigs.
“I’ll probably talk to the homeowners here so that they could keep an eye on it. That way when I bait it, set it and then when pigs go in, I can take it out as soon as possible,” Tynanes said.
The pigs are then hauled out and taken to a farm. The pig hunters do it for free and, of course, they get to keep the pigs."
So, regarding critters, here's a plan: 1. Get as far off the ground as you can. 2. Clean like you don't really mean it. 3. Lock up your garbage, especially at night. And all your other plants.
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