Musings: One Down, ? To Go

Rain was falling when I first awoke, so I lounged in bed for a while this quiet Sunday morning, then Koko and I went walking.

The sun, smothered by the clouds, released its white light in wide, subdued shafts on the lower slopes of Nounou, and a broken rainbow climbed the sky in front of hidden Wailaleale.

The sky was steely gray in the interior, the same color it was late yesterday afternoon, when it prompted a friend to remark that it felt good to see it like that, because you knew Mama Aina was getting replenished right where she needed it most.

And just as Koko and I turned around, a light rain, a tad heavier than mist, blew in from the southwest and followed us home — a home now shared by one less rat.

That’s right, we have victory. I grew tired of waiting for the poison to work and the young buck to return and assess the situation, so I baited a live trap with fat from a steak and placed it right by the entry way the rat was using.

Sure enough, a fat black rat with a very long tail was quickly caught and is presently in a watery holding tank, awaiting burial.

I’m hopeful it’s a more sweeping, and lasting, victory than the one Bush declared in Iraq, but since rats, like cockroaches and ants, tend to travel in groups, I’ll keep baiting that trap until I don’t hear any more scratching.

Moving on to scratchy, got an email announcing Andy Parx “throws up new daily ‘blog:’ Got Windmills?- The Daily Tilt.”

It’s good to have Andy in the blogsphere, as he'll cover stuff I can't get to, plus now I know mine will never be the most vitriolic blog on Kauai. :-)

I also wanted to direct folks to a very interesting article about the origin of the Hawaiian Islands that Jan TenBruggencate wrote for his Raising Islands blog, which is worth checking out regularly for his original reporting.

And don’t miss the very cool collection of photographs posted by another Kauai blogger, Juan Wilson, on Island Breath (scroll down to Feb. 8), which depicts what people all around the world eat in a week.

It’s an eye-opener, that’s for sure.