Quote of the day: “Cockroaches really put my ‘all creatures great and small’ creed to the test.” ~Terri Guillemets
Water collects everywhere with frequent rain – perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes
You haven’t experienced Hawaii until you understand the “other side of paradise.”
When I tell people I’m spending the winter in Hawaii, I can imagine the pictures in their minds. I too, carried pictures of a tropical paradise, sunny days, palm trees, blue ocean, and lovely flowers all around.
Hawaii is that. And it’s a whole lot more. Vacationers see only a small part of life on this island, especially when they stay at fancy resorts and visit only vacation spots.
When you live here amongst Hawaiians, work with Hawaiians, eat and socialize with Hawaiians, you learn that there is another side to paradise.
Some of the things that I never imagined are the stealth mosquitoes that bite me before I even know they’re around – my legs and arms were covered with bites until I learned (the hard way) to wear long pants and long sleeves when I’m going to be wandering in the garden or sitting still for a long time outside.
These big spiders make webs everywhere
Other critters that are probably very beneficial, but they creep me out anyway, are the gigantic spiders that build their webs everywhere. I wear my hat when I’m wandering around the “jungle” out back just so that I don’t run into a spider web and get a spider in my hair. My husband will understand this as he has to deal with my irrational fear of spiders at home.
Wearing my hat when walking around the dense foliage
Ants and cockroaches are ever-present. The ants are the tiny kind (smaller than I’ve ever seen before) that like sweets and fat. If you don’t clean up meticulously in the kitchen, they’ll show up in huge numbers (on the counter, on the stove, in the sink – anywhere a particle of food remains) – gross!
Tonight when I was getting ready to cook dinner there was a giant 3 inch cockroach on the kitchen counter. I watched it. It watched me. After it finally scuttled away, I wiped all the counters thoroughly before preparing my dinner and kept a wary eye out for the cockroach to reappear.
Gecko on leaf
There are cute little geckos and lizards, but I prefer them outside on a bush or tree somewhere, not in the house. Linda (one of the residents here) reported that she woke and felt something crawling on her. She looked and found a lizard in her bed. Eeew!
She also reported finding centipedes in her bed (not here at Akiko’s, thank God!). And the centipedes bite when frightened, causing very painful swelling. Akiko’s advice when working in the garden – “If a centipede starts climbing up your leg don’t swat it. It will head right for your crotch and bite you. Instead, drop your drawers and shake it off.” We all laughed at the time, imagining the four of us women all doing the “drop your drawers dance” at a time out back. But seriously, that’s enough to make me wary of garden work for the rest of my time here.
After buying many of my vegetables at the local food share for a couple of weeks, one of the long-term residents here said to me, “You know about rat-lung fever, don’t you and that you need to cook all your veggies before you eat them?”
African Snail – lots of them hanging around the gardens here
I hadn’t heard of rat-lung fever but I looked it up on the internet. This is nothing to mess with. It is caused by a parasite, that starts its life cycle in the rat (did I mention there are big rats in Hawaii?) and then spends the next part of its life cycle in slugs, snails and earthworms. The parasite is left in the “slime” left by slugs and snails. With all the rain here, there are lots of slugs and snails – I found a slug in the shower last week.
Vegetables that have had slugs or snails crawl on them (inevitable unless you spray toxic stuff around your garden) that are not washed carefully and cooked for at least 5 minutes can cause serious illness in humans. At the very least people get sick for at least a month. At the worst people have died, been paralyzed, and gone into comas. A guy who lives just down the road from Akiko’s had rat lung fever not very long ago and he was sick for over a month. He now sprays his garden to prevent slugs. My love of fresh salads for lunch has led me to this conclusion: goodbye freshly grown Hawaiian lettuce, hello imported lettuce!
I hope I haven’t set Hawaiian tourism back with this post. If you decide to spend some time living in Hawaii, know that along with the paradise comes the other side of paradise – bug and critter paradise.
Welcome Visitor – this moth perched on Jizo-sama’s heart all of solstice day
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