September 4, 2008

I told you I live in the country

It must seem to you like I’ve done nothing but deal with computer problems for the last two weeks. It’s felt like that to me, but I have done a few other things. Last Friday I did a termite inspection for a home right up the coast from me. I enjoyed a little “talk story” time with the very nice local couple who own the home and they introduced me to their pets. That’s Poomba and Wilbur up there, who behave more like puppies than pigs one generation removed from feral. They were pushing their snouts through the fencing to try to check me out, but that made it hard to see their faces. Their papa stepped in and rattled their food bowl so I could get a picture. First thing I noticed about them: they didn’t stink. I’ve been around pigs before and this was a new and different experience. I’m thinking that their pen must be cleaned every day. There’s plenty of mud in their pen for them to wallow and cool off in, so they were muddy, but not smelly at all.

Feral pigs are a real problem in Hawaii. They’re quite destructive to our forests and have contributed to the loss and/or endangerment of indigenous plants and habitats. Hawaii has no indigenous mammals, so all of them that exist here now are intrusive in our fragile environment. Feral pigs are controlled mostly by hunters, a solution which works well because pork plays a big part in local diets. Many of my neighbors are hunters and most of us benefit by having local pork in the freezer year-round. Poomba and Wilbur were found after a hunter took their mother. Not wanting to leave the piglings to fend for themselves, he brought them to my clients, who have been great foster-parents to them and won’t be turning them into kalua pork.

Update on my computer woes: I bought a cooling pad and a wireless mouse today. My wrist is already inflamed after only a couple of days of using the flat keyboard and touchpad on the lappy, so I’m hoping the more ergonomic design will help with that. I also found my tech geek this morning. He’s a guy I’ve known for a while, but I only found out today that he specializes in rescuing damaged hard drives. I’ll take my old computer to him sometime soon & see if he can extract the documents, photos & other data that I can’t access right now.

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