Three Samoa Moments

There are some moments that we have on a daily basis here in American Samoa that pass without much notice. Things that would be very out of place on the mainland and may be against the law, violate various moral codes and otherwise not happen. A few recent examples from last weekend.

I went over to a friend's house for a barbecue on Saturday. I did something unusual for the island, I showed up at the scheduled time. In the palagi community, no one shows up until and hour to an hour-and-a-half after the scheduled time. However on this Saturday, I was lounging around our house without much to do, so I opted to be punctual.

Being on time left me greeted with a few of my friends butchering the meal in their front yard. They were hacking apart a yellow fin tuna, a mahi mahi and a wahoo in the bed of pickup truck. The fish were still frozen solid, straight from the hold of a purse-seiner. So "hacking" literally means bludgeoning a knife/machete/cleaver through solidly frozen fish with a hammer or using a serrated saw to part the head or the tail from the body. Imagine someone trying to saw or hammer their way through a 30 pound ice block while trying to leave the ice block in a few specific sized chunks.

It was gross and bloody work, especially after the out layers of the fish started to thaw. The flies were everywhere, eating up all the stray chunk of flesh that were scattered all over the ground and the pickup bed.

After about an hour, they were left with a giant cooler overflowing fillets, steaks and other cuts of the fish and a massive mess.

This also served as a welcome back to one of our friends who left 8 months ago. He had arrived back on the Thursday flight and moved in with the good Doc. He was moving from his grad student life in San Diego to the lifestyle where you could be asked to gut a fish at in afternoon for your evening meal.

Another thing he got when came back was a beater, island pickup. It was previously owned by one of the attorneys on island. It had sat around for three or four months before its new owner got back to claim it. Let this be a testament to how hard the climate and air is on everything. The roof of the truck had rotted out in the months it was sitting here.

It rotted enough that there were large holes located where the windshield and the roof meet. With as much rain as we receive on Tutuila this is a problem. Once our intrepid grad student got on island, he set about fixing the leaky rook. First, this took the form of keeping the rain off the roof and the interior long enough to get it to dry off in the Southern Hemisphere wet season. No easy task.

This solution took the form of an umbrella stuck directly into the holes in the car canopy. A site I'd never seen before. The truck's new owner was starting to sand off the rusted sections of the truck roof in anticipation of bond-o/sealing the holes.

It's a testament to the corrosive powers of heat, salt and water how quickly metals break down in t his climate. I've had paperclips rust apart in my backpack in only a few weeks. A few months will lead to some extreme results here.

 The last of the uniquely Samoan phenomena that needed cataloging was the toad we encountered in the pool on Sunday.

Sara had already gotten in the pool at our housing complex when I noticed something swimming around the deep end. Turns out a cane toad had fallen into the water and couldn't make its way out. I had a bit of a moral dilemma about this situation. On one hand, the cane toads are an invasive predator that has gone a long way towards displacing a number of native reptiles, amphibians and birds in the environment. They are poisonous and have overrun the ecosystem around where we live. On the other side, a dead toad floating around the pool would probably decommission one of our few reprieves from the wet season heat. It's one of the few perks of living where Sara and I are. We regularly host a wide swath of our friends on hot weekends for cocktails and pool times.

With a little debate with Sara we opted to keep alive our escape from the heat and humidity. I fished the toad out of the water. He'll live to eat and reproduce. Sigh. Only in American Samoa do you need to fight these little battles on a daily basis.

Dog Rescue

Let's start this off with a confession, I occasionally have idiot moments. For example, a few weeks ago, following a Halloween Party at our friend's house, Sara and I got a ride home with a sober driver. The next morning, I walked 6 miles along the ocean side of the airport fence back to the house we had the party at and picked up our car. The idiocy arises from the fact that the three street dogs (creatively named Blackie, Whitey and Oreo; Brownie disappeared over a year ago, but people still ask why Blackie is named that when he's mostly brown, it's because of precedent) we look after and feed followed me on my walk.

It's not unusual for them to walk with us the mile or two out to Airport Beach and hang out while we swim, snorkel and relax. However, this time, I passed right by the beach and kept walking along the sea wall past the airport radio tower and along to the next set of pools and to the point on the South end of the mouth of the Pala Lagoon. The dog kept coming along with me for the walk. This stretch of land is unique in American Samoa as it does not have any wild dogs. The 5 to 40 yard wide stretch of land that borders the airport fence doesn't have any residents for a four mile stretch, so with no one living there, there's no cast off food for wild dogs to sustain themselves. Therefore with no food, there's no packs of dogs.

As we crossed no competing dog pack's territory, there was nothing to discourage the dogs from following me. They followed me the four miles to Lions Park, which is some of the meanest turf for dog packs in American Samoa. Bravely our dogs followed me through, the casually walked through some of the toughest dogs turf. Whitey was the first to turn back, mostly due to getting cut off from the rest of the dogs by a pack in the Park. Oreo made it to the beginning of Tasi Street, where he ended up in a stand off with one of the local dogs and not proceeding any further.

Blackie braved on until the end of Tasi Street, where he fled after getting surrounded by a pack, as I made my final turn into Off-of-Tasi Street. I got in our car and proceeded to start driving back. Oreo was still standing where I left him at the beginning of Tasi Street. Recognizing our car he started to chase it along the Lions Park Road. Once I could see he had made it back to the place where the path back started I sped up. One to discourage him from trying to follow me along the road back and two, to keep from holding up the traffic I had following me as a result of driving 10 mph so that a dog could follow me. I pulled away and the dog didn't see me turn away, so I figured he made it back to the starting point for the trail back. I then proceeded to drive home and fall over for the rest of the day from heat exhaustion.

That evening, none of our dogs had made it back to the house. Sara and I drove to Lion's Park to look for them, but after an hour of hunting around, we didn't see any signs of them.

By the end of the work day on Monday, Whitie and Blackie had filtered back to our house. Both were a little shell shocked and humbled by seeing how the meaner dogs on the island live. However, Oreo, our current favorite didn't make it back. For the next two and a half weeks, we didn't see him. Both Sara and I gave up hope that he'd make it back. Best case, he'd take up with a pack where ever he ended up. Worst case, he was already dead.

It was a bit of a surprise early in the morning when driving home from the gym. Sara was driving and I was staring off into the fenced in grassland that surrounds the airport runway. All of a sudden I saw Oreo standing along the airport fence, only he was on the wrong side of the fence. He was locked in on the runway side. I pointed him out to Sara and we pulled over.

Oreo was a whining, skin and bones version of himself, but it was certainly him. He also had made friends and had another young dog with him. I walked along my side of the fence with the two dogs following along the inside, while Sara drove back to our house to get her phone and the number for the airport. I walked all the way to the gate at the end of the runway and waited. Sara managed to talk to someone at the airport and they said security was on its way to open the gate. Sara also brought some biscuits for the dogs. Which we fed to them through the fence.

Eventually a SUV from Airport Security made it out to the gate and immediately to dogs ran off. In talking with the security officers, we learned that they had been trying to catch Oreo for the last two weeks. Once we asked them to back away, Oreo snuck through the gate. We thanked the guards and then needed to get home and get on with our morning. I walked Oreo back to our house, not wanting to take any more chances that he was going to get lost. Twice he tried to take wrong turns, turns out he's really bad with finding his way home. He made it back OK and so our dog pack is back up to three. Oreo's also been filling out a bit since then and all of the dogs have seemed to recover from their ordeal. Also, I'm an idiot and not allowed to take the dogs on walks anymore.

Miss You, Tucker

Tucker Swimming on the Eagle Falls Trail in the Columbia River Gorge

After a rough few weeks, the end has come for my dog, Tucker. He was put down on Monday afternoon after not being able to eat for the past several weeks. My parents have been caring for him for the past few years, but he's been my constant companion since law school when I got him from the Chesapeake Bay Retriever Rescue.

When I first got Tucks, he was a five year old dog that had major weight issues. He was 125 pounds, I often referred to him as a keg with legs. He didn't know how to fetch and desperately needed regular walks. But other than that he came to me a happy and well behaved dog.

Waiting for the Next Throw in Tahoe

Tucker took a little training to learn to fetch, but once he figured it out he found his calling. Soon he spent daily session chasing the ball on the blacktop at the local elementary school or the grass at Burlingame Park.  It wasn't until we spent a summer of living up at Lake Tahoe that he managed to swim off all the excess weight.

The gravel covered Homewood Beach will always be the place where Tucker was at his best. He's chase sticks and tennis balls out into the water for hours. If you tired of throwing things for him to chase he'd start picking rocks off the bottom of the Lake. Every trip up to the Sayles cabin didn't really begin until Tucker had his swim in the Lake, whether it was summer or there was six feet of snow on the ground.

Even in his last weeks when he couldn't eat and barely walk, he still found some reserves of energy when my parents would take him to the water and throw a ball for him. We know the end was here when on his last day he could only muster a single retrieval from the Bay.

Giving Elbow Steam Baths on a Road Trip

It's hard to say good-bye to your daily companion, especially since he'd been there through many of my recent life phases. I adopted T-Fab before I started dating Sara. I'd often walk him over to her house when we after we started dating each other in law school.

He moved with me from Portland to Tahoe, back to Portland and eventually down to California. He was with me through three years of law school and the years starting to work as an attorney.

What I'll miss about the big guy was his enthusiasm, his non-subtle pleas for attention and his stoic patience.

It's going to be tough to go on without that dumb dog. Thanks for the memories and the years of companionship.

Nothing Could Keep Tucker Out of the Water

Two of my Favorites

Happy Dog

Whales

Right now is whale season here in American Samoa. The Southern Humpbacks migrate here to birth their offspring and nurse them up, during the Southern Hemisphere winter. Sara and I's biologist friends have had multiple sightings of the Southern Humpback Whales and Pygmy Killer Whales, sometimes of up to 16 different individual whales in a day.

Us simple office drones haven't had the opportunity to see even a single whale spout. That was until yesterday, when on the way to work we had possibly the most disappointing whale sighting, ever. As we hit the coast road on our commute into work, at the same spot where a fishing boat washed onto the reef a few months ago, we saw a large grey mass sitting on the fringe reef. It was beat up and looked as if it had just washed up. People were just starting to pull over and stare.

As we drove by, I speculated that it was a dead whale. Turns out I was right, it was a sperm whale that washed up on the reef. It died weeks before it beached itself here, but still not the whale sighting Sara and I had hoped for. We'll need to dedicate some weekend time to seeing some living marine mammals.

PS: We'll also post about our trips to California and Samoa and Spencer and Britt's visit, but needed to get the current news up first.

Wildlife

Living next to the wildlife biologist for the Department of Marine Wildlife Resources has a few interesting moments. Lately he's had the rescue hotline cellphone for stranded and injured animals. In the past two weeks this has led to us being introduced to a baby tropicbird and fruit bat that he's rescued.

The tropicbird was the first one we were introduced to. It was found on the ground near the village of Vatia. It was actually found by one of the seasonal hires for the National Park Service that has hosted us for a few Sunday morning umus at her house. The tropicbird, who we've christened as Squeaky Wheel, based on the calls it makes, was near starved. A steady diet of canned sardines and ahi tuna has brought it along nicely. It's continuing to gain weight and is starting to progress towards being strong enough to release.

The other wild critter came late one night last week. He was found by some villagers who had hear him calling. Mother bats leave their pups in their roosting trees during the night, when they are out foraging. Apparently the bat's mother had no returned to him for a few days and the villagers got sick of his calls so they brought him into DMWR.

Bats are not something that I ever would have considered cute. This little guy has me convinced otherwise. He's a little bundle of leathery wings and a tiny body. He's still in the nursing stage, after some trial and error with a syringe, he's now figured out how to use a bottle and he receives some baby formula every few hours.

We haven't been able to settle on name for our little bat friend. Sara and I have been pushing for either Bilbo or Bruce. Neither one has taken off, but nor have anyone else's names for the little guy.

Neither Sara nor I have ever been around so many infant animals. It's keeping our neighbor on a few different feeding schedules. I don't envy him there. I'm also impressed that his puppy tolerates all these different wild creatures and hasn't tried to make a meal of any of them.