Frogs, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

I'm Cuckoo for Coqui-puffs.

    If there has been a brief hiatus in blogs, I'm blaming it on the weather.  Rain, rain and more rain.  One night on the news they showed a map that indicated that Kapa'au (where Peter and Marla live) received over 9 inches in a 24 hour period.  On that same day Hilo got 21 inches.  By God, that's a lot of precipitation.

   Climate change has spawned a change in our local fauna.  Specifically, we could change the name of our humble estate from Casa Ono to Coquiville.  The coqui frogs, native to Puerto Rico, have been making their noisy march down the newly lush slopes of Hualalai.  Four years ago, we pitied the people who lived 800 vertical feet above us in Holualoa.  Now we close our doors and windows as we head to bed, the better to shield our tympanic membranes from the chirps of the coqui frogs.  Last night, as we visited our snowbird friends down on the beach, Sandra heard coquis just across Alii Drive from our former home at Alii Villas.

    This would be bad enough, but there is no doubt that the coquis are more vociferous during, and slightly after, a rain shower.  It has rained six of the last seven nights and I feel like I'm ready to paraphrase that wacky bird that shilled a children's cereal,: "I'm cuckoo for Coqui-puffs!"

    It is only natural that the coquis are more amorous when its been raining; as they are amphibians they need to lay their eggs in a moist environment.  A fresh puddle is just what the doctor ordered.

   In addition to coquis, we have seen an increase in snails and slugs.  You north westerners are no stranger to those animals, but up in the PNW these lovable molluscs don't harbor rat lung disease.  This curious parasite, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, is a parasitic nematode that can cause, among other

Kareem?  Is that you?

terrifying pathology, brain abscesses.  Just in the last month, a lady ordered a sandwich at Island Naturals, our beloved health food store from which we buy bulk spices.   Half way through her nasch, she noticed a small slug on the lettuce in her sandwich.  The slug was retrieved and tested positive for RLD.  Holy Leaf Lettuce, Batman!

   This week, while gardening between rain showers, I discovered two of the largest land snails I have ever seen making the two headed mollusc.  They were fully extended from their massive shells.  The larger resembled a blackened Johnsonville brat. And I was reminded of a very old joke involving the sainted Lady Di and the Jeopardy-ready Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  I mean, this was one big, expletive deleted mollusc. 

    By virtue of Sandra's excellent research, we now know that these were specimens of the giant African land snail, Achatina fulica.  The omniscient net suggests that this introduced animal can grow up to a foot in length...a dimension of truly NBA proportion.

    If  all this isn't enough to put you off your feed, you must have an iron stomach.



   As this blog is putatively dedicated to fish identification, I took a swim today between rain showers, down at good old K Bay.   Suffice it to say I was hoping for an exciting sighting, the better to regale you with.  The shelter was hosting the monthly swim/snorkel for the handicapped,  Deep and Beyond.  Of all the things that inconvenience me in my monomaniacal mission to find fish, this has

to be the most worthy.  God bless 'em.

   The short report is that I didn't see anything blog worthy.  Since the last blog highlighted the keiki of the sailfin tang, I was lucky to nab a picture of the adult so you can see what that cute little yellow butterfly of a baby's father looks like.

    On that happy note, I will bid you good night.  ko KEE!

jeff

For comparison to the adult, another picture of the juvenile sailfin tang at Kawaihae.