Geckos galore!

The picture above is of a mutant two-tailed gecko in our storage closet. There are a LOT geckos in Hawaii and many look just like that one, although the typical (non-mutant) gecko only owns one tail. They come in a variety of colors and sizes and make a strange clicking/knocking noise to communicate, especially at night. These friendly (if rather skittish) creatures supposedly eat bugs, so we always try to put them back outside (away from the stalking eyes of the cat!) if they make their way into the house. Unfortunately, they are also very attracted the bug zapper we put up out back in hopes of curtailing our mosquito problem. Instead of zapped mosquitoes, our zapper still holds the remnants of three zapped geckos. When I say that geckos are very prolific here, it's not an exaggeration. For example, after the tsunami hit last month, there was a news report on the effectiveness of the siren warning system. Most of the sirens went off without a problem, but a handful remained silent because they had been "shorted out by geckos"!

We finally see a "dog that runs in rough water"

One of my goals in life is to see various wildlife in its natural habitat in person, (things like bears, toucans and puffins), and in Hawaii specifically I wanted to see sea turtles, whales and monk seals. I've been lucky enough to have several sea turtle encounters in Hawaii, and we took an amazing whale-watching cruise in February, but I had never seen a monk seal until last weekend. We hiked Ka'ena Point on Saturday and were thrilled to see two of the creatures. I think there's some rule about how close you're allowed to get to them, but being blissfully without crowds of onlookers we were able to get about 10 feet away without the seals even twitching a whisker in our direction. They're one of Hawaii's two native mammals (the other being the hoary bat) and, sadly, they're endangered. Jarrod and I felt it was a great treat to observe these two seals. In Hawaiian, the monk seals are known as 'ilio-holo-i-ka-uaua or "dog that runs in rough water." I'm glad we're not the only ones who think the seals resemble our boxer, Conan! The other seal we saw was basking in the sun with its head under the water. Here's a look at the scenery... the hike takes you to the northwestern tip of Oahu and can be accessed on both the west and north sides. We took the west (Waianae) side and it was spectacular. At the end of the trail is a bird sanctuary of sorts with tons of albatross nests. We saw several adult birds and two babies.