A cool, pull-up-the-comforter night leaves morning dewdrops on windows and garden leaves. I’m waiting for my nice, young “tree specialist” Skip to arrive. Today the attention will focus on a Tahitian plumeria tree that is old and overgrown, an ulu
A cool, pull-up-the-comforter night leaves morning dewdrops on windows and garden leaves. I’m waiting for my nice, young “tree specialist” Skip to arrive. Today the attention will focus on a Tahitian plumeria tree that is old and overgrown, an ulu (breadfruit) tree, and a mango — all of which need pruning.
I gave one of our last ulu of the season to our doctor yesterday, who likes to cook them, blackened and soft in the fire, and share with friends. The mango, grown from a Hayden sprout and reverted to a common forebear, yielded only three edible fruits this past year. The Tahitian plumeria is covered with creamy, fragrant flowers that are useless for lei, since they bruise immediately once picked. It’s encroaching on the neighbor’s fence and continues to drop piles of blossoms, leaves and occasional poisonous fruits.
But here’s the thing, counting the plus side on my fingers: these larger trees shelter our singing birds and occasional squawkish harems of wild jungle roosters (wild jungle hens); they make the back yard into a shady garden, allowing the proliferation of plants, including palapalai ferns and orchids, that would shrivel in full sun; they serve to regularly bring back our connection with friends who gave us each sapling (Geraldine Tam and her late husband, Reuben Tam, librarian David Thorp, and Jim Jung) in our younger, dig-and-plant days; they continue to clean and scent our air, lower the temperature around our home, and provide a buffer to high winds and driving rain.
Not only that, but having been a tree-climber, -lover and -swinger in my young days, I’ll never forget our 7-year-old granddaughter’s joy at finding a home-crafted swing, hung from a main branch, ready to get going and soar up into the shady canopy of the “Gran’pa Tree.” I’m well aware that branch crannies provide protected space for a number of ants, bugs, geckos and lizards, plus toads like burrowing in around roots, and chickens are on the prowl for malingering roaches and centipedes.
So, now we’re back to the creepy-crawlies promised at the end of the last Green Flash focusing on island birds and how they arrived.
My take on centipedes and bird mites were covered in “Attempting the ‘green footprint’” (TGI, Sept. 14), but now it’s time, according to my husband, the retired biology teacher, to address the subject of geckos vs. anoles. His pet peeve is seeing photos of anoles reproduced with captions labeling them as geckos. Since both are lizards (of the Class Reptilia, Order Squamata), what is the difference?
One thing that’s immediately noticeable is that anoles usually stay outdoors, as opposed to our house- loving geckos (Infra-Order Gekkota, name stemming from “gekoq,” a Malaysian word imitating the sound they make).
My Colorado son-in-law and grandsons would crouch, motionless, on our lanai, watching anoles blow up their throats into red balloons as they staged territorial displays around our rain gutters and the orchid pots. By day. By night, they would watch for geckos appearing on the out- or inside of windows and from behind framed pictures, laughing when they chirped.
Geckos, it seems, are unique among lizards in their vocalizations, chirping in social interactions with other geckos. “There are 1,196 different species of geckos,” informs the article posted at diffen.com/difference/Gecko_vs_Lizard. You may also find many another amazing fact about these helpful lizards — including a comparison chart with others of the 3800 other species of lizards listing the species, physical characteristics, reproduction, eating habits and origin, as pets, and so forth with references given. There is also an embedded video on their differences. Wikipedia also contains an interesting article.
Back to the experiential mode: If you’ve ever managed to stroke a lizard, their skins feel dry and scaly; a gecko’s thin skin feels bumpy. Also, lizards have clawed feet and don’t climb vertical surfaces, whereas geckos have broad toes covered with flaps of skin containing thousands of bristles to help them in their aerial and upside-down modes. Also, you will not find an anole trapped in your sugar bowl or licking around your squeezable honeybear container (!). Kitchen geckos, I’ve learned, are hot for sweetness.
The house geckos definitely blend in with our neutral wall colors, more yellowish in the kitchen. The porch ones are “threateningly” dark and often have no tail, or growing stumps, due to their more endangered life — the sliding and swinging doors, the garden storage tub and tool basket being accessed, the movement of porch furniture.
There weren’t many chirpy nocturnal pals this past year, since we had our house tented last January. It took nine months for them to reappear in smaller force to help us in the War on Termites and an occasional Graf Zeppelin style roach — maybe from the “white pearl” eggs we’ve occasionally discovered glued inside moldings, stored flower pots, or even our fire alarm, which is occasionally tested by the emergence of a new hatchling.
As we welcomed back our gecko menagerie, I wondered, as with birds, how they arrived on island. The old Hawaii science texts explain that it was easy for our Asian species of geckos to hide between the canoe joints or deposit their almost indestructible eggs there for later perpetuation of the species.
This reminds me of what my sensible friend Joy once said, never forgotten, that once the conversation gets around to cockroaches and geckos, it shows that the dinner party’s over.
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Dawn Fraser Kawahara, author and poet, regularly instructs on the topics of history and Hawaiian culture for visitors to Kauai through Hawaii Pacific University’s “Road Scholar” program through Pacific Islands Institute. The writer is completing her second memoir, “Burma Banyan, A Quest for Roots,” based on her life story and soon to be published. She continues as principal/owner of TropicBird Press and TropicBird Weddings and Celebrations Kauai (kauai-weddings- andbooks.com) under DAWN Enterprises.
