HCS, Part III: The Snow-White Phenomenon

There's lots of amazing wildlife in Hawai'i, but I am sure you already know that. I am not going to bother showing you photos of turtles or boars or cool fish, it's already been done, and much better than I could.

But there's something you may not know about: the Snow White phenomenon. I started noticing that while I drink my morning coffee, animals come out of nowhere and just kick it. All of these photos were taken from my seat while drinking coffee on various mornings.

The most common are lizards and geckos, which have been mating lately and making cute little babies.

This guy lives in our gardening glove, apparently:


And does this to attract the ladies:


Baby geckos are incredibly cute and tiny, and sort of see-through:


One morning during crosswords and coffee, this little guy climbed on my friend Aaron's foot to catch a fly. He hung out there, crawling around for about ten minutes while we looked on in amazement. He caught two flies.


So, clearly you can see that it's a stinkin' nature show all the time over here in my backyard. But then down at the coffeeshop there's a whole other level of animal friendliness. The birds in Hawaii don't have good defensive instincts because they didn't have natural predators here before humans came. They sort of just stand in the road and forget to fly away when you drive up to them. They come up so close it feels like I am in a disney movie and it makes me want to live in a candy house and sing arias all day.

The coffeeshop in my neighborhood has outside seating, and if no one is sitting in the chair across from you, the birds take pity on your unpopular self and fill the empties for you. And they're much prettier than the one-legged pigeons that try to steal your muffin at my Oakland coffeeshop.


Woody Woodpecker also likes the espresso drinks:


This one here is not at a coffeeshop, but we did discover that birds were coming into the house through the open doors during the day when we saw these little birdie footprints in the Zen garden. I guess birds need peace and relaxation too. We wouldn't want to be speciesists about granting access to the Zen garden.


But the real kicker was this one. At the coffeeshop one day, I was chatting with some Japanese women who were on vacation and out of the corner of my eye I saw something move in the headlight of one of the cars in the parking lot. It would poke its head out and then go back inside. At first I thought it was a rat, and then I started to think it was a weasel. The women I was chatting with didn't see it, and I tried to explain. They were really polite but clearly thought I was bonkers. I had to wait until the thing climbed all the way out on the bumper before they saw it and I could confirm my claims of sanity.

I took these photographs to eradicate any suspicion amongst my readers that I may, in fact, be bonkers. Unfortunately I was unable to capture an image of the weasel standing on the bumper, only the little head poking out. Apparently those critters are pretty quick.


Super close up:

Sorry it's a little blurry but the subject was, you know, weaselly.