Watching Animal Planet

One advantage of having a lot free time in a jungle is that I have plenty of hours to stare at animals. The world is swarming with millions of creatures from big to the small, but oftentimes we tend to only notice the hairless apes. Many of these unnoticed creatures go about their daily lives without the slightest knowledge about the vast scale of the planet or their tiny significance in the grand scope of things, but they are still pretty darn interesting.

            Like I have mentioned before, I spend many hours sitting quietly, and I have had to find ways to fill these hours. Watching animals and insects has been one of those ways. As I have peered into the miniature universes of these critters, I have observed amazing behaviors and fascinating actions that have previously gone unnoticed right beneath my nose. The social interactions and peculiar habits of animals can entertain me endlessly.

            Being in a tropical rain forest, there are bound to be birds. Against the odds of practical aviation, these enterprising flyers have crossed an ocean of thousands of miles to reach the outcrops of land here in Micronesia. When they landed, they found a paradise ripe for exploitation. There are no large predators here, so the jungle is ruled by the birds.

Right after a short stint of rain is when I can usually hear their chirping at full blast. Throngs of birds emerge from their leafy nests and serenade the skies with squeaky melodies. When I listen closely I can pick out the different sounds and follow the connections between the calls. The communication is undeniable. These airborne squawkers compete audibly to let their call be known above all others. I am not sure if they are flirting with a little chickadee or mocking a macaw, but they make a lot of racket while doing it.

The red ones like to perch on the banana trees and slurp water from the upturned leaves of the singular drooping pink flower that dangles down from the trunk. The blue/yellow ones are always in action and move around at a wild pace from tree to tree. The larger white ones (terns?) are harder to spot and spend their time high in the trees. At dusk, the mammalian buddies of the birds come out to fly. Thousands of flapping fruit bats screech across the orange clouds on their way to find sweet mango nectar.

            Chickens are also a lot of fun to watch. The chickens in Chuuk are special. They don’t just cluck around and pick up grain from a farmer’s hand. These are wild chickens. They scour the jungle for meals and fight viciously for territory and breeding rights. Sometimes little boys organize it or sometimes it’s spontaneous, either way I see plenty of cockfights. The male roosters screech and claw in a fury of flapping wings until one of them hobbles away bloodied and beaten. Not only are these chickens ferocious fighters and jungle survivors, but they can also fly. Thousands of hours of watching cartoons as a child has taught me that chickens can’t really fly. Maybe a little bit of fluttering, but not real flight. But Chuukese chickens can take off and shoot 40 feet to the top of a tree, and then flap across the gap to another one with one with ease.

            The birds and chickens have staked out a pretty good place for themselves, but they do have one natural enemy. The lizard. I am not talking about the hundreds of geckos that crawl along the walls of my house and bellow their ckckckckckckckck at all hours of the night while pooping their black pellets all over my floor. I am not talking about hand length green lizards that slither up palm trees and munch on flies. And I am not talking about any of the other little cold-blooded pests that crawl through the rotting debris of the jungle. I am talking about the Koduf. The humungous beast of a reptile that is roughly related to the monitor lizard. This monster is the king of animals in Chuuk. He is as thick as a human leg and can stretch five feet from head to tail. He stalks the mangroves and mountain forests to prey upon anything that his vice like jaws can snap upon. He will chomp a chicken with ease.

            The Koduf might be the natural overlord of these islands, but man brought along his best friend to dethrone the king. Dogs have replaced giant lizards at the top of the food chain and have been known to take down the beasts every so often. Chuukese dogs are also much different than most dogs you are used to. Most of them have owners that provide some leftover food and an occasional pat on the back, but overall they can be considered wild dogs. There aren’t doggy doors, leashes, poopy bags, or water bowls for these canines. They take what they can get from humans, and scrounge for the rest. They are all mutts and have the same general look: short hair, mangy coats, long snouts, under 50 pounds. Watching these dogs interact with each other has changed my conception of their intrinsic nature. It’s obvious to see that they descended from wolves and still maintain the pack like ideals of their ancient ancestors. They roam in groups of three or four and are constantly in wars over turf. They bite unknown wanderers and brutally protect their homes. The hierarchy of alpha and beta is deeply ingrained.

            On the surface of things, dogs are the “top dogs” so to speak, but if you look closer you will find that they too have bequeathed the royal title of dominance to another set of creatures. Itty bitty insects. These little guys are the plague of the tropical world. Insects thrive in untold numbers in this warm and wet weather. They breed along the swampy shorelines and piles of rotting vegetation on the soggy forest floor. Then they set out to achieve the only mission of their short meaningless lives, to annoy the hell out of every other living thing. They bite, sting, eat, suck, and poop on anything that comes in their path. Mosquitoes are atop my personal list of hatred, but I think the lice and ticks are a bigger problem for others. Those blood sucking parasites feast on the gnarled skin of the animals and create a never ending cycle of itchiness.

There are dozens of types of ants that skitter around the ground, but three particular types have bothered me the most.  The black centimeter long biting ants can inflict a miniscule bite that will make a grown man scream in pain. They almost always strike on the feet and immediately induce a girlish cry of anguish. This throbbing pain can spread up the leg and hurt intensely for hours. The smaller cousins of these guys have a less painful but more enduring and itchy bite. A nibble by one of these babies will swell up to the size of a half dollar and itch incessantly for almost a week. Another kind of ant that is very common around these parts is as small as a grain of sand and seems relatively harmless. It doesn’t bite or itch. It eats. Interestingly, it doesn’t eat what you think it might eat. These microscopic black ants aren’t known to swarm over plates of food or bags of candy like you might expect, they just go after random shit. Their victim might be a tube of medicine, a bar of soap, a book, a waterproof bag, a t-shirt, an ipod charger, a pair of tweezers, a surge protector, a computer keyboard, my happiness or any other seemingly inedible object.

We also host loads of all the creepy crawly insects that scare the bejeezes out of most people. Invincible cockroaches scuttle in every dark corner and pounce into action as soon as the sun goes down. These buggers not only scurry around with their bone chilling tickity-tick legs, but also fly across the room and have amazingly good aim at landing on my face.

Cockroaches are gross, but I can handle them. Spiders on the other hand push me to my limits. As a little kid I was terrified of spiders because I had a recurring dream about a gigantic spider living at the foot of my bed, which I eventually accepted as the truth and set up an arrangement of sharing my bed space with the humungous arachnid. This led to my habit of sleeping in a crunched up ball, because I had to be fair and give the spider half the bed or else he might bite my feet. However I got over my mild arachnophobia as I grew up. By the time I came to Peace Corps I was killing spiders without flinching and was no longer scared of their potentially deadly bites.

But just like everything else, Chuukse spiders are different than most spiders. Many of them look like the standard 8 legged fiends of our attics and basements, but many of them don’t. I have awoken in the night to find a set of black tickling fingers attached to a peanut sized body prancing across my chest. I saw a white and yellow hairy spider hurry across our kitchen. But the mother of all spiders are the big brown, hard bodied monsters. I have been told that they don’t have a poisonous bite, but they still scare the shit out of me. Some are pretty small, they could probably be stuffed into a coffee cup. But some are huge, and could probably eat a coffee cup. With bodies as big as my pinky finger and legs engulfing my hand, these boys are not to be trifled with. I once got up in the middle of the night on another exciting gastrointestinal adventure, and sleepily plopped down on the toilet to handle my business. I heard a crunching sound and turned my head to the left. Approximately four inches from my face was a monstrous spider chewing on the still living body of a cockroach. The cockroach was being eaten from behind and was struggling in vain with its antennas and front legs flailing at a frantic pace. The spider didn’t seem to be perturbed, he just methodically consumed (not drained) the entire roach.

Once while staying at a hotel, I was lazily crawling out of my bed after a long night of drinking. I sat up in my bed when my friends came in, but I didn’t take off the sheets yet. I finally decided to start my day and threw off the sheets as I rolled out of bed. I leapt back in surprise as a five inch centipede with spiky pincers wriggled from underneath the center of my bed and quickly disappeared under the mattress. This poisonous crawler was apparently hanging out in the middle of my bed right around the level of my crotch for the entire night, but thankfully didn’t feel inclined to say hello.

Watching the animals in my jungle home has made me appreciate their unique talents and sometimes unsavory actions. Regardless if I hate them or love them, I feel privileged to have taken a peek into their tiny universes and see what makes them tick. Seeing this shit in real life is way cooler than watching animal planet at home. I have been utterly impressed with the beautiful birds, dominant dogs, large lizards and raging roosters; and equally disgusted with the mocking mosquitoes, crunchy cockroaches and scary spiders.