Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving! It's sunny and blue-sky cheerful here in Hawaii. I have been blessed beyond measure. After baking like a crazy woman last night, I have been relaxing all morning watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (of course, five hours behind everyone else). Now we're waiting for all the dinner guests to arrive and the real party to start. I hope you all are having a wonderful, safe weekend filled with family and friends! Stay out of Walmart if you value your life, and remember, you really do have to sample every kind of pie.

"Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise You. The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, that all the ends of the earth may fear Him." 

Psalm 67:5-7

Lizard in My Shower

Lizards and geckos are an everyday sight around here. I've gotten used to seeing them on the ceiling, in all the windows, in my bedroom, and even in my bathroom. I'm so used to these cute-toed critters, that I don't even care if one or two clings to the bathroom wall above me while I take a shower. It's too much of a hassle catching them. Besides, they eat insects. The lizards and geckos are pretty clever at holding on with their toes. They rarely fall from their vertical and upside-down perches. But sometimes they do. And sometimes they fall in your shower. 

This tiny baby lizard fell in my shower tonight. Thank goodness I just getting out, and he didn't fall on me. I think the steam from the hot shower made him lose his grip on the wall, and tumble down he did. He survived, of course, but he got a little wet and sudsy. That was nothing. He was petrified of my camera though, and after trying unsuccessfully to get away from it, he froze like a statue. Poor little guy. I think he's still recovering from the trauma. 

Too Many Chickens

There are chickens. Everywhere. Sure, Hawaii has monk seals and sea turtles and humpback whales and geckos and albatross. But the animal most commonly sighted (on my island at least)... is the wild chicken. Some people say that farm chickens were set loose during Hurricane Iniki, and ever since they've multiplied to the billionth power. The roosters crow at ungodly hours; the hens roost beneath every other bush. They have no predators (hello, cats?) so they have no population control. We see them in parking lots, on the highway, on telephone lines, on distant hikes up in the rainforest. They are simply irritating, for no other reason than that there are too many of them! You can't even eat them - there's even a t-shirt that describes that the only way to cook a wild chicken is to put it in a pot of boiling water with a lava rock. When the lava rock is tender, the chicken is done.

This is our local chicken herd: