Jurassic Poultry

Karma can be a real pain.

Travis told me the hike at Manoa Falls reminded him of a jungle and at some point prior, he had also told me that much of Jurassic Park was filmed on this island. I put these two little fun tidbits together and thought, I should hike Manoa Falls. But first I should watch Jurassic Park. Don’t try to follow nerd logic, just go with it, mmmkay?

Jurassic Park was one of those high points in my childhood movie-watching development. Do you remember the chills you got when Sam Neill and Laura Dern first saw the grazing dinos? Or how bout when that smarmy little kid gets blown off the electric fence? Or maybe, the entire scene in the kitchen with the raptors drumming their claws on the stainless steel? Okay, fine, how bout when Laura Dern, totally stoked to see Sam Jackson, reaches for his arm and sighs “oh, Dr. Arnold” and wham that’s all that is left of him and then moments later, limping, she tells herself to RUN. And if that doesn’t do it for you, then all I have left is if you didn’t feel your heart soar the “When the Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” banner falls down over the T-Rex like a deranged beauty queen, then you are made of wax, my friend.

Of course, maybe watching a movie about dinosaurs breaking loose and stalking the humans on an isolated island right before one goes hiking alone was…less than bright. I dunno. I never said I had impeccable timing.

As I descended the trail to Manoa Falls, I was not disappointed. Ferns and overgrown trees abounded, reaching from floor to sky, enclosing me in its humid shade. Mountains in the distance, a waterfall you could hear but couldn’t see. It was like I stepped onto Isla Nubar (for those of you who have been living under a rock and have never seen Jurassic Park, that’s the island with dinos on it). Oh Michael Crichton, I muse, what a masterpiece you wrote, and Spielberg, you cinematic wizard, for creating a movie whose special effects still look good. So I wander along. There aren’t many people out on the trail and there are only so many geniuses who would come out and hike in the mud. I am a genius.

And I get to thinking about dinosaur breeds and which one I’d least like to see in the jungle and which one I’d have the best shot against it. And then maybe, if I were a dinosaur, what kind I’d like to be…and so forth.

And then I hear it, rustling in the shiny palm fronds. I freeze. Remember in science class that whole line they feed you about instincts, you’re either fight or flee? Either I’m hardwired improperly or that theory is just a load of crap. I go cold all over and almost wet my shorts. You see, I’ve already played out the scene in my head when the dinosaur tracker turns to his left only to realize the raptor has been hunting him. “Clever girl,” he murmurs. And then he is ripped to little khaki shreds.

Okay, so subconsciously I know there isn’t actually a dinosaur in the bushes. But that doesn’t preclude big cats, wild boars, machete wielding crazies. I glance to my left, reluctantly, really, seriously, and earnestly glad that I wore black shorts. The waxy green fronds shake and now my legs can move, I scurry backwards in the mud. The largest of the creature fixes its beady eyes on me and lets a long, indignant cockadoodle. Sigh. Wild chickens. Could I be any lamer? The urge to wet myself and the shiver feeling faves. I look around the make sure no one has seen this. No one has seen me. But now, I’m starting to empathize with that fat guy at the zoo and the peacock incident. What is with this island and freaking birds popping out all the time? I was actually legitimately spooked. Ugh. Stupid karma. Guess I shouldn’t have made fun of that fat guy. (seriously, look at these surly drumsticks! Not only that, but sometimes they get into chicken scuffles and fly upward into the bamboo, they look just like the martial arts fighters from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Fierce!)

Whatever. Like you imagination doesn’t get the better of you sometimes.

Ignoring the monstrous wild chickens, I push on. I reach the mouth of the Falls and get to talking to the two other hikers. I'm good at this kind of thing, not by any virtue of my own, but I have what people consider a friendly familiar face and I'm always being told I look "my-daughter-in-law/student/grand-daughter/brother's girlfriend/niece." I suppose this is better than being told I look like that female serial killer that Charlize Theron played, but really, I'd just prefer to be told I'm gorgeous all the time. I am most frequently adopted by older couples on public transport, who would prefer I were their grand-daughter, since I'm so much less sullen, have no piercings of any kind, won’t look at you blankly if you reference a president prior to Jimmy Carter, and am generally helpful in describing attractions and places to visit.

Anyway, I strike up a conversation with a nice lady with a totally rockin' turtle tattoo, freshly inked on our neck. She's a former Hawaii resident who now lives in California. She's come back to visit her old places every winter and this year she’s gotten a tattoo of Hawaii’s beloved sea turtle. I’m going to omit the part where she describes the whole process, completing with scabbing. I’m squeamish, so there.

The other person is a computer programmer from Cambridge, MA. He looks like he could be the unfortunate love child of the lead singer from Blues Traveler and the guy from Bare Naked Ladies. He is shiny bald. I love shiny bald men who forego the comb-over, and just go for the wax, so dazzling in bright sun. This way I never have to think about where the hair from the comb-over is growing from. When you have to wonder, is that scalp hair or ear hair, it's time to go bald and beautiful.

They're both lovely, easy to converse with, and eventually the nice lady offers to take both our pictures. "You should go in," she says. "There's a rainbow on the falls, it would look so pretty." She's right (you can see it in the picture to the left, I'm on the right in my favorite armpit-airing pose). But then again, what if there are flesh-eating bacteria germs? Or a sinkhole? Or one of those Moos I keep hearing about? Moos are legendary lizards who make Godzilla tremble and they hide out in water and get super-ticked if you go into their water holes. You're supposed to throw a leaf or something on top of the water to gauge their mood. I don't know. But at least as far I can discern, there are no Moos. (Note: the Moos in my head look like the spitting dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, FYI). As for the flesh-eating bacterial and sinkhole, that is anyone's guess.

But, it's jungle-humid out and despite the landslide warnings and gigantic legendary lizards, the water does look mighty refreshing. So I go for it. It's not even that glacially freezing as I'd expected, but climbing out to the falls is tricky. The rocks are slippery, covered in fine green algae. I'll save you the suspense. I don't fall in. I know you’d like that, but I don’t.

But then the programmer decides he wants a picture too. I think we all know where this is going. The fat man is wearing no-traction flip flops (they call them "slippers" out here), and as I've already described the rocks are ridiculously wet and slimy. To be fair, I won't over exaggerate the extent of his fall because it's so obvious he's going to fall.

And he does, and actually, he's more graceful than say, a water buffalo. But he does land with a splash, sort of catching himself but not really. So it's not so much the slip, but it’s the noise he omits. It's like a high pitched cross between a rebel yell and yodel: "WA-HOOOOOOOOO" he cries as he stumbles. I look over him, did that sound really just escape a grown man? To my relief he starts to laugh, because I'm already losing it and so is the nice lady who took our pictures.

Don't worry; he doesn't even get that wet. Only his jean shorts are soaked, his top is fine, and he gets to go home with a good story and guest cameo on my blog (which apparently, just 8 people follow. I hate you non-committers). But we all sit there and have a good chuckle, we three random strangers in the waterfall. At some point though, I realize I really need to use the restroom, the waterfall is not a good option, I can only imagine how a Moo might take you whizzing in his sacred waterhole, and if I'm not entirely mistaken (see last picture, see his shirt isn't even that wet), I think there may have been some budding chemistry between these two, so I bid them good bye, and depart.

The hike out is worse than the hike in, because the slippery mud is all still there but now gravity is really working against you. A Hawaiian man (you can tell because he's nut brown tan and roughly the size of a compact fridge) and his gorgeous dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, advises me, just to go with the natural contours of the earth, that's what Mother Nature wants you to do (I'm not kidding, that's what he said). And my first reaction is, that is the biggest pile of crap I've heard in awhile. And then my second reaction as I'm bumbling along with grace of aforementioned water buffalo, I think, well why not? I grow bold, leaping from root to rock to mud flat. Suddenly, I am one with nature and the natural contours, Mother Nature and I, we tight, for like a whole 7 minutes, and then I'm on my ass in the mud checking the ring finger on my right hand to see if its broken (ruling: have decided it was not broken, only jammed painfully and not bent or crooked). For the second time since coming to Hawaii, my backside is covered in foul smelling mud, only this time, I have adapted. No white shorts. I've opted for black. Regrettably though, it still looks like I shat myself.

As I pass three Japanese tourists who are ascending, I hear snickering. Oh that's rich, I think. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, despite being considered the smartest sentient beings on the planet, the Japanese tourist population cannot dress in proper hiking attire to save their intelligent lives. I've seen this everywhere from Diamond Head, to Makapu'u to the Blowhole. I spin around and look down at what freakshow footwear they have on and I'm not disappointed. The dude is wearing Converse, but one of the girls is wearing (oh, I kid you not) strappy silver sandal heels (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WOMAN! YOU ARE HIKING!) and the other is wearing some sort of gold ballet flat with ribbons or something that lace up half her legs. She gets another point off for wearing what looks like a hat ripped right off Panama Jack's head. Good luck with that in the mud and the rocks, I think, with enough snark to knock over a toddler. I muster up all remaining dignity and pass by, acutely aware of being covered in mud, but still smug.

This time on the way out, I don't even turn at the rustling of the bushes and the mocking clucking of the Jurassic chickens. I sigh and wonder if Moos like chicken.

An Afternoon at the Honolulu Zoo

I would imagine that if anyone ever bothered to ask me how to keep the ol’ snark skills sharp, I’d tell them to find places that breed snarkiness. For some it might be watching fat people at a buffet, or a gaggle of soccer moms in track suits in a park (question: why are they always wearing work-out clothes, but never working out?) or one of those religious services where people praise the Lord and then writhe around on the floor. You know, whatever get your snark juices flowing. For me it’s the zoo. I mean, there’s the poo throwing, the screeching, the mating dances, and crotch picking galore. And then there are the animals.

One sunny afternoon, not long after Fabio and his man buns had depleted my snark reservoir, I decided to recharge myself and see what the Honolulu Zoo had to offer. I was not disappointed.

I’m not there 10 minutes when I see a guy dangling his toddler into an exhibit. He is trying to put his tiny daughter on the back of an enormous, dusty Galapagos tortoise. This isn’t quite on par with climbing in the pit and trying to hug the Panda or putting your child on the back of an elk in Yellowstone or anything, but literally in front of this exhibit, and there is no way to have accessed said exhibit without seeing this sign which reads “CAUTION: TORTOISES BITE.”

Moreover, the herd (I dunno, do you call animals that move that slowly a herd? I mean, would you say, there goes that freewheeling herd of sloths?) of tortoises are eating leafy vegetables and fruits, and they eat very much the way I do. Locate food, roll eyes back into head, open mouth wide, gulp and swallow, ask questions later. Moreover, there’s half a watermelon, easily the size of this toddler’s head and I mean, could you really blame the tortoise if he did mistake this kid for a melon? Not to mention, these are not particularly clean animals. It’s like someone opened up a college dorm room dustbuster and emptied four years worth of the contents all over them: dust and flies and other bits of refuse abound. Is this really the photo-op you were looking for? Oh honey, remember the time little Jennie got typhus? Wasn’t that fun!

I make a low, disgusted noise in my throat and move on, pleased with this scene, only a tad remorseful that I couldn’t get a pic of Dad, child and the sign in one frame. Just take my word for it. Tortoises bite, okay?

Onto the hippos. I like hippos. A lot. Even after that hippo bit that woman in half last year, I still maintain that it probably wasn’t the hippo’s fault. The Honolulu Zoo has a particular good Hippo exhibit where you can see under the water and on land, and instead of having the normal, fat happy lazy hippos which loll around like uninteresting logs in the water; this zoo has active, playful hippos fighting over a white ball. Did you just get the mental picture? Yeah, I thought so. It’s just like Hungry Hungry Hippos! And these two juggernauts are really going for broke, crashing against the glass in pursuit of this ball. This alone makes the price of admission worth it. I stand here spellbound for who knows how long, until one gladiator-sized hippo soundly trounces the other in the quest for the white ball and the other storms off to sulk.

Feeling satiated, much like a fat, happy lazy hippo, I meander along the random jungle animals exhibits. I approach a little gravel bridge where I can see 3 or 4 snickering pre-teens hunched over an exhibit. This can only mean one thing, for what else would hold the attention of 3 or 4 pre-teens for more than 10 seconds? Obviously, two animals are getting it on. And sure enough, there are two Gharials (nasty looking reptiles that look like crocodiles with pale creepy eyes and elongated bodies. They’re just downright creepy. I mean, even if watching animals get it on were your thing, you wouldn’t pick this species). Of course, I’m not a pre-teen in my hormone heyday, so after eavesdropping on a discussion that walks the line between being naively moronic and deeply upsetting, I move on, decidedly sketched out by the fascination of reptiles knocking boots.

This is a good zoo, don’t get me wrong, it’s big and spacious, but even it can’t escape the fact that its major clientele is children. Zoos are children magnets; I know that, it comes with the territory. And it’s not really the children I blame, it’s their parents. I know that when you were children your parents, much like my own saintly beacons of parenthood, kept you all in line with various methods, maybe threats, maybe little mind games (hey guys, you want to play the quiet game? Starting…now! I was so freaking competitive as a kid, but not too bright, as I always fell for that one), my point is, we didn’t run around screaming like little monsters. We didn’t go banging on the glass of the tiger enclosure or our parents would quietly remind us that it was just a quick throw over the glass into the tiger’s cage.

I dunno, maybe it’s that families nowadays have 2 parents and 6-8 kids (oh hi, did you not get the memo? Earth is overpopulated. Moreover, this is not the industrial revolution and something about your Macy's wardrobe tells me you folks ain’t from a farm, so honestly, why do you need a workforce of children? Keep it nuclear, 2.4 and that .4 can be that weird little fiji mermaid child you keep locked in the attic, that’s fine.)

Then I’m standing in front of the wild Australian dingoes exhibit (yes those dingoes, as in, dingoes ate my baby, dingoes), and there’s a sign that helpfully explains that dingoes mark their territory with urine to let other dingoes know, “hey, I took a leak here, so you might not want to sit there.” Zoo keepers have clearly overestimated the maturity of zoo goers. One need only head over to the gharial exhibit for a reminder.

There is an enormous, fat sweaty man with an even fatter wife and three bloated, sausage-like children, and this enormous, fat sweaty man, clad into a dirty wife-beater, makes an off-color remark in a loud, booming voice about marking his territory. His piggy little wife snickers. I throw up in my mouth a little. In case you can’t tell, I'm not really a fan of this guy. He’s just all around offensive. He is blocking my access way. He is making fun of the dingoes. He and his super-sized family are blotting out the sun and chortling like piglets and generally smelling bad. I try to get around them, but this family has a wonderful way of spreading themselves out over the pathway and loping forward slowly, like a herd of oblivious elephants, so there’s no getting through. So I follow behind them, trapped, listening to Papa Crisco brag about how the tigers weren’t that big (maybe you missed the sign that said, Sumatran tigers, world’s smallest breed of tigers. Snark. Maybe you also missed the part where it said they would still hunt you down and make Kobe beef of you. Snark snark), and then he’s ragging on the “little” alligators (funny, how there were no alligators in the zoo, just gharials, maybe you missed that sign too. Snark snark snark).

I mean, this man is just hating on all the animals, and then from out of nowhere the bushes above our head rustle and the fat man shrieks. I mean really, it’s not quite in the range of helium being let out of a balloon, but it’s enough to send the meerkrats scurrying for cover. From the bushes, a peacock descends, nonplussed, upon Mr. Macho “I ain’t afraid of no pygmy tigers but I scream when I see birds." I snap a pic of this utterly charming avian (see second to last pic) and applaud its good timing. Having seen the peacock though, the man’s reaction is even funnier, instead of being relieved; he’s even more upset that it’s a moderately sized bird and not, say, a Sumatran tiger. He draws his wife in front of him like a shield and babbles on about how peacocks bite. I see my opportunity and sneak by them. Thank you, peacock diversion.

This is yet another stellar feature of this zoo, the grounds have a gang of peacocks roving around, acting persnickety, and looking for hand outs. Before feeding a peacock, I shyly ask the zookeeper at the food pavilion if it’s okay, (or at least its a staff person in a safari shirt, and he says, anything is okay except shaved ice, which does weird things to their poo. Okay, so maybe not a zookeeper, maybe a groundskeeper). I buy a pretzel and plop down. A peacock makes it way over, and looks at me expectantly. It just seems wrong to throw the pretzel bits down in the grass and make him forage for them. He's just too pretty. So I hold out my hand and the peacock takes the pretzel delicately. Although I don’t dig on micro-humans as a rule, I do like well-behaved children as much as the next person, and there are a few around watching me bravely feed the peacock. So to the delight of my little audience, I feed him the rest of the pretzel from my hand, utterly enchanted by his shiny blue plumage, and suddenly I am grinning like an idiot, all those memories of being a goofy, little kid at all the zoos, aquariums, and fairs with my parents comes rushing back and the bad mood brought on by the awful blubbering man dissipates. It's like I'm six years old again dressed in Osh Gosh B'Gosh, life is ridiculously uncomplicated, and all I wanna do is ride the ponies.

I round out the trip with a stroll through the sacred Nene preserve. The sacred Nene, beloved to native Hawaiians, is a pretty, mellow, dark-colored goose which takes me awhile to spot amongst the shade. When I do, it regards me placidly from where it sits upon its nest as if to ask “there, are we all better now?”

Oh shucks yeah.

Don’t get me wrong, I would still throw half of the little buggers running all over to the gharials, given the chance. But I’m just saying. Good times at the zoo. Good times.