Flora and Fauna on Roi
Wildlife Flora and Fauna - originally published on January 31st, 2002
I am not exactly sure what fauna is but it seems to go hand in hand with flora in literature. The most common plant noticeable to a layman such as myself would be the coconut tree. I’ve mistakenly called these palm trees before when I was in the Philippines but one of the natives there corrected me and told me those were coconut trees and not palm trees. The difference seems to be that there are coconuts growing on them…. I have some coconut trees at my beach place as well. I collected all the nuts into a pile but they mysteriously disappeared. You are not allowed to cut down a coconut tree and if you do it will cost you $750. The native people here have rights to the coconut trees. I suspect they may have had a right to the coconuts that fell on my beach as well. Another tree common here that is also found at my beach place is the pandana tree. I never heard of these before but they are pretty cool. They send out multiple stems from the same trunk. If the tree senses that a limb has too much weight on it then it shoots down some more roots from the limb to help support it. My tree provides me with pretty good shade and I’m considering building a deck/tree house by it. Recently I read about them in Victor Slocum’s book “Castaway Boats”. I highly recommend it.
On Namur there are a number of wild chickens running about. These birds have black plumage and the males make a loud noise in the morning that sounds like what I’ve read that roosters make. They don’t seem to be particularly dangerous, as I have ridden within 10 feet of them on my bike without being attacked. A more dangerous resident here is the cocoanut crab. These crustaceans have unusually strong pinchers that are capable of cracking open a cocoanut. By the same token, they have been known to also crack open peoples fingers so I have been cautioned not to attempt to pick them up. That really hadn’t entered my mind. I have yet to see one of these monsters but I have seen the cocoanuts. They are larger than what we have in the supermarket in America and they seem to have a shell over the outside of the black hairy part. From the size of the cocoanuts I can only imagine how large the crab’s pinchers would have to be to fit around them. I am hoping I never encounter one. There are other less ferocious crabs here that are quite amusing to watch at night when I’m sitting on my beach close to my pandana tree and cocoanut trees that I won’t chop down. There are other unseen denizens that you must be careful of. I heard a story this week of a young man from Arkansas who came here to work. This was his first trip outside of Arkansas and was a big adventure for him. The first day he got here he went to the beach and was amazed at the beauty of the ocean having never seen it before. He collected a seashell for a souvenir and stuck it in his swimsuit pocket. Something crawled out of the shell and stung him in what the Chinese refer to as the external kidneys. It was his left external kidney. This appendage quickly swelled up and was quite painful so he sought medical help. To make a long story short, he was soon halfway towards being a eunuch, was sent back to Hawaii on a C-141, his contract was terminated and since it was terminated early he was responsible for the flight fare both to here and back. This poor kid had never made more than $6 an hour before coming here but did not get a chance to earn one nickel here. Eventually he made it back home to Arkansas and whether he ever left again I don’t know. All he has to show for his adventure aside from the experience and the immortality, which he inevitably achieved here, was that I suppose he is now capable of singing half an octave higher.
Another deadly pest here are the rats. These rats are quite large. Initially I mistook them for small plumb deer with no antlers. Later I remembered that deer have short fluffy tails, not long skinny ones, and their legs are long and graceful. I then concluded that these must be rats. I saw my first one while watching a movie at our outdoor theatre. The movies we get here aren’t the best with the exception of the movie I saw last week. I think it was called “A Touch of Evil”. It starred Charlton Hesston and had Vivian Leigh, Marlena Dietrich and Orson Wells and was set in a Mexican border town. I guess this gives you a clue that we have to wait a while to see the latest releases. The sound system is horrible so I can only hear about every 5th word so I guess it doesn’t matter a whole lot how good the film is. But the rat appeared during a movie I saw a few weeks ago. He scampered across the stage towards the end of the film. I looked around to see if the other patrons were scared but discovered I was alone besides the projectionist. One thing I like is that it usually takes the projectionist a few minutes to change reels so I have a chance to use the head if I need to in the middle of the movie. A few days later I saw one of these rats in broad daylight not far from the theatre. The real danger of the rats is that the flies here like to land on their feces. This picks up bacteria that can cause infection.
Bacteria and infection is real serious here. If you get even the most minor of scratches they recommend you scrub it out, rub Neosporin on it, and cover it with a band-aid. A lady here claims she scraped her arm and coral started to grow in it. I’ve since learned that is a myth or so the safety people claim here. But they do recommend you scrub, rub, and cover. I think the main problem is the flies landing on the rat poop.
There were a number of wild cats here as well. People here liked them because they entertained the idea that these cats might control the rat population. An environmentalist came out and said that cats do not kill rodents so the Army came around and shot the cats but kept the rats. This may sound cruel but if the cats were large enough for people to imagine that they might take on a rat then they must have been the size of tigers.
Aside from the chickens, there are numerous other birds on this island. There is a white kind with a long treacherous black beak that I am sure is planning on gouging my eyes out but for some reason I kind of like them. They often sit in my pandana tree hatching plots to attack me but I like to think they are keeping me company. They are rather pretty. There is this other bird with long legs for his small size with grayish plumage. I have no idea what any of these are called. But these birds are kind of cute and seem to be fond of running around on the road. One day when I was walking back from the dive shack I almost stepped on a baby bird that had webfeet. It still had its down and seemed at first to take me to be its mother. Eventually it seemed to abandon that idea and even showed some sign of fear as I peered at it. I thought about trying to find help for it but on further reflection I figured if it was me that was the baby my mom would have come looking for me and felt sad that some big guy had carted me off so I left it alone. Jocelyn, a nice Hawaiian lady here said I should have taken it home in a box and nursed it back to life. She did the same for a chick but felt sad when she turned it loose and it didn’t recognize her the next time she saw it. Next time I will take the baby chick to her because she probably won’t resist it and it will be out of my hair(figuratively speaking) and conscience. Someone once said the women here on Roi resemble the pioneer women who pulled the covered wagons across the Rockies. Wait a minute, that was oxen not pioneer women. I don’t think the women here look anything like that and would never say something like that myself. But then, I’ve never seen an oxen. But Jocelyn definitely does not look like a pioneer woman or an oxen. Unfortuneatly, she works nights and I work days so I rarely get to talk to her about the care and treatment of baby birds.
We also have a typical assortment of lizards that seem pretty harmless. There are no snakes or other venomous animals above water. I haven’t seen or felt any mosquitoes either [this was written before I visited Airok]. I guess that is enough on the natural side of Roi-Namur. I will cover sea life in another installment.
