Walking Birds & Jumping Geckos: Intriguing Tales About Interesting Places On The Island Of Kauai

Cas Franklin

Copyright 2015 by Cas Franklin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

Cas Franklin/Walking Birds Books

Copyright Registration Number TXu 1-577-101

ISBN 978-0-9799471-0-0 Ebook Edition

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Table Of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1: The Myna Bird

Chapter 2: The Blue Room

Chapter 3: The Blue Dot Toad

Chapter 4: Kauai on Foot

Chapter 5: Rain & Rainbows

Chapter 6: The Green Flash

Chapter 7: Moa, Moa, Everywhere

Chapter 8: Coco Palms Past, Present and Future?

Chapter 9: The King Lives

Chapter 10: Hawaiian Cave Spiders

Chapter 11: The Hawaiian Nene

Chapter 12: Hollywood Loves Kauai

Chapter 13: The Eye of the Storm

Chapter 14: The Garden Courtyard at Nawiliwili Harbor

Chapter 15: Jumping Geckos

Chapter 16: The Glass Sand Beach

Chapter 17: The Forbidden Island

Chapter 18: Egrets and Regrets

Chapter 19: Snakeless in Hawaii

Chapter 20: Opihi Pickers

Chapter 21: A Taste of `Pidgin` Pie

Chapter 22: Schofield Barracks

Chapter 23: A Garden for the Senses

Chapter 24: Last Times

Foreword

Imagine you live on a tropical island in the middle of an ocean where the tide sweeps the beach clean every night leaving a fresh deposit of shells for you to search through every morning. All beaches on the islands are public domain and yours to roam to your heart’s content. Property ownership extends only to the vegetation line, so the beaches are yours to explore.

The Hawaiian Islands are the most remote landmass in the world, and made up of a huge chain of atolls and islets that stretch out for over thirteen hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean. Kauai is the fourth largest island in the chain. Mount Waialeale, which is in the center of the Island is called the ‘wettest spot on earth’; it receives 425 inches of rain fall each year on its peak. Seven beautiful rivers wind their way down the mountain top through lush tropical jungles to the sea. The Island’s beautiful green valleys, the mountains of Kokee, and the NaPali coastline, give the island its nickname, The Garden Island.

The Island’s uniqueness lies mainly in its people and its history. The early Hawaiians believed in a harmonious and sacred relationship between mankind, the earth and the gods. The descendants of those early Hawaiians even now believe that their ancestors’ spirits still walk these lands and on quiet Hawaiian nights the natives living on Kauai say they often hear the drums and chants of the ancients echoing across the island.

The stories in this book encompass a wide variety of events and island happenings that can’t be found in any travel guide. My hope is that the book will give you a glimpse of island life and after having read it you will feel that you have been to the island.

When I was on the island my day job as a Landscape Architect with the largest landscape firm in the islands led me to many interesting places and took me behind many doors that might otherwise have been closed. My clientele ranged from local to from all over the world: Hawaii, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Canada, the United States and Hollywood. Those experiences were the basis of many of these tales.

See you at the luau.

Chapter 1: The Myna Bird

After a lot of surveillance I came to the conclusion that the birds of Hawaii do a lot more walking than they do flying. One would think that with as much walking as they do, Mother Nature might have equipped them with better legs. In most cases, the little sticks they walk around on don’t look like they would hold up much. This observation, of course, does not apply to the seabirds; they are in a category all their own. Those boys really know how to fly. Some of them are so durable they stay at sea for three years at a time before returning to the rocky northern shores to nest.

One of the first birds on the island that catches your eye is the Myna bird; their love of the highway makes them easily the most visible bird on the island. They are those birds that seemingly have a death wish as they hop around on the side of the highway. I know you must have seen them; just think about it a minute, they are all over the highways. They stand on the side of the road and wait until they see your car approaching and then the little daredevils dash out onto the highway directly in front of your car. You slam on your brakes, and then while you’re fighting to keep your vehicle under control and prevent the car behind you from crawling up your backside, the Myna bird turns on a dime and scurries back to the shoulder. Then when you have caught your breath and have your car under control, you glance back in your rearview mirror and watch the little devil do a double-hop back out onto the highway, seemingly undaunted by it all.

You ask yourself, What the hell just happened? But the truth of the matter is you could have saved yourself a lot of wear and tear by just going straight on down the highway and pay them no mind whatsoever. Their timing is impeccable. They have a built-in radar system that always allows them to make it back to the side of the road ninety-nine percent of the time.

They are easily recognizable by their black head and the bare patch of yellow skin around the eyes. Their backs and breasts are brown, and the tail is dark black with a white tip. The beak and legs are yellow. Although they spend most of their time on the ground, they can fly quite well and it’s only when they do fly, that you see the mockingbird-like flash of white on their wings. When they are strutting along the side of the highway, the birds have a cocky little bowlegged walk, but when they are trying to escape your tires, their bowed little legs move like pistons.

They are very social little fellows that travel around in pairs, but at night they assemble in noisy communal roosting flocks. And from what I hear, if you like to converse with birds, they can be taught to talk.

They definitely can be put in the category of birds that would rather walk than fly. They are generally found in the lowland areas and spend most of their time on the ground searching for food. They were introduced to the Islands from India around 1865 to control insects. But now they have become quite metropolitan and like to hang around people. You could say they definitely fall within the urban bird category.

I put up with watching the little daredevils darting in and out in front of my pickup until I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to find out what was going on. Why do they want to live out on the edge of the envelope? I asked myself. Does it make life more exciting? So one evening after work I threw my lawn chair into the back of my pickup, grabbed my binoculars and drove to a likely spot on Kuhio Highway where I knew the birds gathered. I then sat down on the side of the road like some highway car counter and watched. People driving by were giving me funny looks like maybe I had a radar gun or something, but I paid no mind. I was determined to find out what was going on.

The binoculars brought the little critters right up close and personal. And voila! It was suddenly all so simple. It hit me like a ton of bricks; my eyes nearly fell out of their sockets, and I picked my jaw up off the pavement.

Bugs! Those little devils were risking life and limb for bugs; they were after the goodies on the asphalt. Big, fat, freshly killed bugs that just bounced off your windshield and on to the pavement. And all they had to do was get there before the next car squashed ‘em. The first car pops ‘em and if they don’t get there first, the second car squashes ‘em. I mean who wants to eat a flat, squashed bug when you can get a nice fat, plump one. All you have to do is beat the oncoming car to the bug. Never mind that you might end up squashed yourself. Never mind that the woods are full of the same bugs, and all they have to do is go chase them down, the way nature intended it. But man and his invasive ways made it too easy; those bugs are just lying there on the highway waiting to be eaten. They couldn’t let ’em go to waste.

I sat there on the side of the road for a while, satisfied that I had solved the mystery, taking in my brand spanking new knowledge. After a few moments I put my binoculars back in the case, loaded my lawn chair into the back of the pickup and stood there on the side of the road, leaning up against my truck watching the myna birds dart back and forth on the highway when the thought occurred to me; somehow our wild life doesn’t seem quite so wild anymore. Ever since man emerged from the caves, every bird, fish and animal has had to adjust his habitation in some way or other in order to escape our invasion. The fact that the myna bird’s favorite food is road kill is only the tip of the iceberg.

Chapter 2: The Blue Room

Have you ever been to the Blue Room over on the North Shore? Don asked me as he cast out his line.

I had already set my pole and I was lying back, hands behind my head, enjoying the view and waiting for "old big’ to jar me awake. The wind was calm; the ocean was flat, and best of all it was Saturday morning. The view from the Cliffs at Mehaulepu was great; you could see for miles in any direction and almost always count on sunshine and good weather.

Never heard of it. I answered. What is it some kind of restaurant?

No, it’s a pool of water down in the cave that glows in the dark.

Glows in the dark? I asked, How can water glow in the dark?

"That’s the big mystery. It’s down in a cave in one of those North Shore lava tubes. That’s why they call it the Blue Room, the glow gives off a blue light and lights up a small room.

Maybe it’s some kind of electric fish that makes it glow. I said.

Thinking he had a bite, Don ignored me and jerked back hard on his pole trying to set the hook. He missed the fish, and I