|
Chapter Two: Pu'uhonua o Honaunau
You think I'm joking about the feral chickens. But trust me, on page 37 of our birds of Hawaii book, there is an entry for feral chicken as one of the native birds of Hawaii. Apparently, they were brought over in the Polynesian outriggers along with the feral pigs, the coconut, the taro plant, and the breadfruit. And at 2am when the moon rose, the roosters all started crowing in a fierce territorial display that lasted until daybreak at 6:30. And I could have forgiven them, if they hadn't sounded like hoarse children doing bad imitations of roosters crowing. These were the least melodic chickens I've ever encountered. They sounded like hung-over, barfly, beaten-up-in-a-back-alley roosters. But then I don't think they got enough sleep either.
Dean snuck out at dawn, of course, to go running. The farm was at the bottom of about a mile half-paved, half-gravel driveway that run up towards the highway past 3 or 4 other houses. The closest neighbor up the road had barn, a messy yard full of equipment and several covered sheds. And 10 puppies in the 15-20 pound range. Each one a different color. We had jokingly begun to call them the "Bumpkus' dogs" in reference to the movie, "Christmas Story" where the next door neighbors have a huge number of hound dogs that ignore every living soul but the narrator's father. Well, Dean had no problem running up the driveway past the dogs. They'd run alongside him for a few paces and he'd found it rather cute, told the little puppies to go home now. But an hour and a couple miles later, when he was running back down the hill into their territory from the highway, well, things were a little different. Puppies felt a l-i-t-t-l-e more threatened. In fact, they teamed up on him. A couple tangling up his feet while one of them got behind him, jumped up and bit him on the ass. Puppies were not nearly as cute and playful then.
From my perspective, I'm lying in bed, half listening to the dogs go nuts up the driveway without thinking anything of it because the dogs had been having barking jags on and off since 2am when the roosters started in. Then Dean stomps in, swearing about something, stripping off his pants so he can take a shower. And I roll over and say, "what happened to your upper leg?" Oh, then did I get an earful. (It turned out the dog had not broken the skin when he bit him, but had managed to scratch his leg badly with a toenail.)
We drove into town to check out the farmers markets. Which unlike home, turned to be more arts and crafts handiwork than food. But we did get some atemoya (aka custard apple) and some rambutam (aka hairy lychee). We also had fresh papayas picked ripe from a tree outside our guest house.
|
|
