When I lived in Hawi, we had a small man made
pond behind our house. It was about four foot
square and filled with lily pads and toads.
We had two cats named Mama Cat and Joey. They ate
yellow rice birds. Sitting on our small wooden
lanai, we watched our cats snare the birds in their
mouths. They crept methodically up to birds and
quickly captured them. We threw macadamia nuts at
the cats to get them to drop the birds. The birds
then fell out of the cats’ mouths and flew away
unhurt.
Except for one time.
Mama cat grabbed a bird. One of us threw a
mac nut and she dropped the bird, but the bird
didn’t fly away.
Oh no, what should we do now?
Well, I had been studying herbal medicine so I
knew that when a person or an animal is in shock,
cayenne pepper by mouth can revive them. I ordered
my friend Juliet to get a dishtowel, hold the bird
steady and I’d drop some cayenne into its tiny
beak. Juliet bent down to gather up the bird and
WOOSH, the bird jumped into the pond.
Oh no, what would we do now? Surely the bird
would drown.
Before any of us had time to formulate a plan
B, a toad jumped across the pond and swallowed the
bird whole.
The bloated toad floated with the bird’s feet
sticking casually out of its mouth for the rest of
the day.
Copyright, Kristin Wolfgang, 2003: 259 words
