Animals

Long time no post. As usual for this year, work has been hectic. Put together a group of photos taken in August and September with Rylan visiting animals. The first one is from the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki where they have a number of relatively exotic animals, including a penguin:


His favorite animal is a cow. He can't get enough Mooooooo. Here Rylan visits a cow at the Honolulu zoo (I think that's where it is):


On Kauai we ate at an old restaraunt in Lihue/Puhi for Jodie and Ron's wedding that had a horse ride through the old plantation. Didn't go on the ride but Rylan and I got to feed the horse:


And our favorite animal, the rooster:

Actually, as you can tell from Rylan's face, roosters are not our favorite. A rooster moved into our nice quiet neighborhood about a month ago or so. He took up residence in a tree across the street and woke us up every morning at 5am and again at 6am. This was when I was traveling for the TMT project and was always very tired. I wanted to deep fry that rooster every morning. I was not alone, all the neighbors felt the same way about the rooster, but no one seemed to have an answer.

So I borrowed Jayden’s airsoft gun and scouted out that rooster’s roost. Joni, Joel, and I put on our camo outfits and drew a bead on that rooster. I hit him square with the gun but he flew off with Joni giving chase. The bird took shelter under a bush down the street. I couldn’t get the gun ready to fire again so I took out the machete and took a swing at him. But he had too much life left in him and he ran off at the last moment before the blade severed his head from his body.

The whole neighborhood rejoiced that next morning though because the rooster did not sound off at 5am. For a few days all was quiet and everyone hoped that the rooster had suffered a fatal blow and crawled off and passed away after I hit him with the airsoft gun.

There was not a peaceful third morning though. The rooster was back. He moved to the other side of the house and decided 4:30, 5:30, and 6:10am were more appropriate times to sound off. This inspired neighbor Hector to get involved in the hunt and I obtained a more powerful pellet gun from Michael. Hector and I would prowl around various back yards before the sun came up searching for that damn rooster. The rooster would always take off just before we could draw a bead on him and take a shot. He was one smart rooster: as soon as we got near he would stop crowing, as soon as we pointed the gun in his direction he would take flight, and every night he would change his roost just enough so we couldn’t find him.

A couple times I did get a shot off and hit him. Each time he would get quiet for a few days again. But he always came back. Now it seems like he has slowly faded away. I made one last shot at him that hurt him, a few days later neighbor Bob got his hands on him but couldn’t get a good grip, and a few other run ins seem to have taught him to keep his big beak shut. I still think he will come back and haunt us so we continue to maintain a trap borrowed from North Shore Michael in another neighbor’s back yard. The hunt continues…