The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (14 page)

Never a slouch at spotting wildlife, Lisa managed to find lizard after lizard sunning themselves on smooth rock faces. Some were the size of my index finger and decorated in the most delightful metallic bronze sheen. Others were as big as a mid-sized Iguanodon. By this point in the day, all the lizards had warmed themselves to the point where they moved very quickly.

We continued our ascent, mounting a rock staircase between sculpted lion paws. Up and up. We were all clad in sandals, but at points the stairs were too shallow for a good purchase, so we stripped to bare feet. At one point, our progress was barred by a monkey. Charu expressed concern, explaining that they can be really mean little devils. In a rush of testosterone, I offered to go first. I said, “Excuse me, please,” and the monkey politely stepped out of our way.

Finally, at 380 metres above sea level and fully 200 metres above Kasyapa’s water garden of naughty pleasures, we achieved the summit. Everything else was down, and all of it was lush green forest. I might have felt a degree of pride at having completed so
great a climb on so hot and humid a day, but we had been preceded to the top by many small children and old women, many of them encumbered by traditional robes. Lisa told me that Duran Duran had shot their video for the song “Save a Prayer” from this peak, and I wish that she hadn’t. I later looked it up on the Internet. That’s six minutes and three seconds of my life I’ll never get back.

Next our driver took us to the cave temple at Dambulla, where the curse of the white guys hit us again. As Sri Lankans, Charu and Chaminda were welcome to enter the temple at no charge, but as foreigners, Lisa and I required 300-rupee tickets. While Chaminda secured our tickets, we stood in the shade of a Bodhi tree. These are said to be descendants of the sacred Bodhi tree that overarched the Buddha as he gained enlightenment. Propagated from cuttings, these trees are found at principal intersections of many communities in Sri Lanka. The leaves of our tree rustled very gently in the breeze.

Attaining the temple first involved a climb up a gigantic slippery rock. The day was passing, and getting warmer by the minute, but it wasn’t too much of a slog for four fit young people. Life didn’t seem like much of a slog for the monkeys that lined the trail. The big difference was that the monkeys had the sense to lie about in the shade. We showed our tickets to a uniformed guard and left our sandals with an attendant, only to find that the stone walkway was blessedly hot. Charu and Chaminda showed a degree of dignity, but Lisa and I hopped around like water sprites. It was only a minute or two before I could say that the soles of my feet were well and truly burned.

The site’s history dates back more than two millennia, and a series of five caves contain carvings and other depictions of Buddha. We entered the cool and shady interior of the first cave. Inside was a gigantic reclining Buddha that we could see only after our eyes adapted to the dark. The next cave had Buddhas on all four sides. Charu said that the twenty-four statues represented the succession of twenty-four Buddhas to date. I discreetly counted the figures. There were only twenty-one, but I didn’t tell Charu.

Each cave ceiling was painted with hundreds of images of Buddha. Chaminda explained that the subtle differences in the hands of the statues and paintings had significance. These were subtleties that he had learned in school but had since forgotten. Following the lead of our hosts, Lisa and I laid freshly washed lotus flowers, stems removed, on a desk in front of a particularly friendly rendition.

Back at the hotel, the remainder of the day was filled with eating, drinking, swimming, and bug-watching. I was the insect king. I found a red-and-black centipede and gave him a wide berth; centipedes bite. I found an orange-and-black millipede with orange legs and was able to pick him up and show him around, knowing him to be a detritivore. I was pleased to stumble across stick insects—not the common-old everyday sort related to bugs, but those more closely related to grasshoppers. It was a classic example of convergent evolution. Finding a red-and-black butterfly bashing himself against a window, I gathered him up and walked him over to a ledge. When I opened my hands to set him free, he fell like a stone four storeys to the ground below. I suppose it must be some sort of anti-predator adaptation.

With the daylight fading, Lisa and I sat on a terrace, drinking gin and tonics, listening to a gentleman playing a recorder on a nearby rock. A small bird flew in, and Chaminda identified him as a
Konda Kurulla.
A little bigger than a sparrow, with a black head with a crest, a grey body, and a white rump patch, the name translates loosely as a bird with hair. Bats and swifts took to the air for their first bugs of the night, and all was right with the world.

V
IRTUALLY NO PLACE ON EARTH
has avoided the ravages of introduced plant and animal species. Even Sri Lanka, possibly the original Garden of Eden, has been invaded again and again. The Global Invasive Species Database lists 120 species for Sri Lanka, most of them plants. Tea didn’t make the list. We rarely think of our crops and livestock as introduced species, even if a large part of our diet is derived from plants and animals brought in from far and wide.
In Sri Lanka, I had seen all the tea plants that a rational man could ever want, but I couldn’t remember drinking a single cup of it. I could, however, remember a lot of gin and tonic. And monkeys.

REASON NUMBER SIX FOR INTRODUCING A FOREIGN SPECIES: BECAUSE MY OUTHOUSE IS UGLY.

S
OMETIMES EVENTS IN LIFE
can go spiralling outward from the most trivial of incidents. I had picked up a copy of
Islands
magazine because it had a pretty picture on the cover. The issue had a special feature on Hawaii, which probably happens about four times a year in
Islands
magazine. In its treatment of the island of Kauai, the issue described an upcoming festival in Koke’e State Park dedicated to an introduced plant species. The Banana Poka Round-up was to feature a parade, live Hawaiian music, face-painting, and lessons on
lei
making. Best of all, I could register for a workshop to learn to make baskets from vines of the introduced banana poka plant. How could I possibly miss all of that?

Regrettably, I missed all of that. The Banana Poka Round-up coincided with a trip I had scheduled to southern Spain to look at endangered ducks. Fortunately, Michelle Hookano at the Koke’e Natural History Museum promised me that if I could make a trip to Kauai in February she would be pleased to show me around and introduce me to banana poka plants. And so, on the basis of a two-page magazine piece, Lisa and I tore ourselves away from the depths of a Canadian winter and headed for Paradise in a slightly modified form.

I was, admittedly, among the last people on Earth with sufficient money to visit Hawaii who had never actually done so. Almost everyone I knew had been there, and that is exactly the reason why I had never gone. It is also the very reason why Hawaii is knee-deep in introduced species. Everyone wants to go to Paradise, but they want to make it more like home by bringing along reminders of what they left behind. Hawaii is in perpetual competition with Australia for bragging rights about whose landscape has been more thoroughly chewed up by introduced species. Australia has rabbits, cane toads, camels, rabbits, fire ants, foxes, rabbits, pigeons, and more rabbits, but virtually everything in Hawaii has been brought from somewhere else.

Shortly after stepping off the plane at Honolulu airport, I was bitten by our first introduced species in Hawaii—a mosquito. There are no mosquitoes—or indeed any other biting insects—native to Hawaii, and the one that got me was likely
Culex pipiens fatigans.
It was introduced when the ship
Wellington
put in at Maui for water in 1826. Before filling their barrels with fresh drinking water, the sailors tipped out their reserves of stale water, contaminated by the larvae of the mosquito picked up in Mexico. Before the mid-1800s there was no word in the Hawaiian language for “mosquito.” It has one now,
makika,
which diminishes Paradise just that little bit.

While waiting for our flight to Kauai, Lisa and I walked to a nearby waterside park, where we spotted a range of lovely birds, including Zebra Doves (introduced to Hawaii in 1922), Spotted Doves (mid-1800s), Red-crested Cardinals (1930s), House Sparrows (1871), House Finches (1860s), Common Mynas (1865), and some lovely little creatures with yellow heads and breasts, splashes of red on their faces, and olive backs, called Saffron Finches (1960s). We also spied several Java Sparrows, which were first introduced about 1865 but didn’t become established until their introduction again in the 1960s. They are now trapped intensively for sale as pets overseas. So far, Paradise had revealed nine introduced bird species, and nil native species. Because of introductions, the birdlife of Hawaii is considerably more varied now than before human contact,
despite the extinction of more than half of the native species, including the Hawaii Mamo, the ‘Ula-’ai-h?wane, and the Kona Grosbeak. Several other native Hawaiian birds are feared extinct, including the Kakawahie, the Maui ‘Alauahio, and ‘?’?.

T
HE ISLANDS OF HAWAII
have a combined human population of just over 1.2 million. Kauai, the “Garden Island,” tucked up in the upper left-hand corner of the chain, has a population of 58,303 but an average daily visitor population of 16,160, which surely also makes it the “Covered-by-Tourists Island.” On any given day, every fifth person on the street is a visitor. Residents of Kauai make up just 4.8 percent of the state’s population but are responsible for only 2.2 percent of the state’s violent crimes. Even so, everyone was keen to point out that the criminals on Kauai target tourists. A guidebook, our hosts at our rental accommodation, our car rental agreement, and even a sticker in the Jeep warned us not to leave valuables in the car, or they would, absolutely, most certainly not be there when we got back.

Hawaii is the perfect place for people who love little factoids. The state bird is the Nene, its tree the candlenut, its flower the yellow hibiscus, and the state fish is the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, a coral-reef dweller also known as the Hawaiian triggerfish. All of these are native to the islands. The state motto is
Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘?ina i ka Pono,
which apparently translates as “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” The state song is “Hawaii Pono’i,” and the state’s four nicknames are Aloha State, Pineapple State, Rainbow State, and State of Utter Confusion.

When we drove from our rented accommodation in Lawai to a grocery store in Kóloa for provisions, we discovered a local protest against the removal of large old monkeypod trees to make room for additional retail development. Monkeypod trees are certainly stately, but they are not native to Hawaii, having been introduced from Mexico in 1847. Surrounding fields supported abundant Cattle Egrets, introduced in the mid-twentieth century to reduce pest insects around cattle, which were, themselves, introduced. In the
grocery store parking lot, we spied Moa or Red Junglefowl. With red comb and wattles, feathers of flame along the neck, and jet-black breast, flank, and tail, the cocks seem to fear nothing. Except hens. Moas were the first birds to be introduced to Hawaii by settling Polynesians and do particularly well on Kauai because, unlike other islands in the state, this one has no introduced mongooses to eat their eggs. Kauai had similarly missed a major outbreak of coquis—small, very noisy frogs introduced from Puerto Rico that swarm over other islands in the chain.

Back on our
lanai,
we heard smoochy-smoochy noises, which promised to be the occupants of the adjoining suite, but proved to be house geckos, also introduced, this time from Southeast Asia. Indeed, none of Hawaii’s terrestrial reptiles or amphibians are thought to be native. Even so, the state now has five species of amphibians and twenty species of land reptile. It was kind of romantic to sit back and watch Lisa point out one smoochy gecko after another.

M
ONDAY WAS PRESIDENT’S DAY,
so we could not get our official introduction to banana poka plants in K?ke’e State Park until the following morning, giving us the opportunity to explore the south coast of Kauai. Of all the wonderful opportunities described in the guidebooks to the island, the neatest seemed to be the Barking Sands Beach in Polihale State Park, where footfalls on golden sand were said to sound like the barking of dogs. The description of the roads to Barking Sands as “miserable” didn’t deter us. We checked and rechecked that our Jeep’s rental agreement did not explicitly forbid our travel on the rough access road and set off along Highway 50 on a beautiful sunny morning.

We were instructed to follow the road until it ran out. When it did, we found a sign telling us in no uncertain terms that the park was closed. Permanently. To emphasize the point, the sign was punctuated by a large bullet hole. As we considered our next move, a posh black Nissan with four occupants came beetling along the prohibited road and pulled onto the highway. “What do you think
they were doing down that road?” I asked Lisa. “Two young men and two young women? I think
that’s
what they were doing down that road.”

On our drive back along Highway 50, we spotted two Pueo, a subspecies of Short-eared Owl, which represented our first native birds. Although the owl is native to Hawaii, it is thought that it has done much better since the arrival of the Polynesians, who altered the landscape toward open grassland, making foraging by the owl much more effective. The highway was lined with coffee (introduced) plantations perforating mile after mile of sugar cane (introduced) plantations. Of all agricultural crops, tall, scrubby sugar cane must be among the ten least pretty. Even so, it was prettier than the military airfields and missile firing facilities that also lined the road.

Monarch butterflies were, by far, the most common butterfly we spotted on Kauai. They weren’t found in Hawaii until the middle of the nineteenth century, but whether they were introduced intentionally or by accident or managed to disperse there themselves isn’t clear. Their establishment followed the introduction of milkweed plants, the favourite food of monarch caterpillars.