The White Flower, the White Devil, and the Black Ball of Fur

Settle in, ladies and gents.  This is going to be a long one.  Fair warning.

First of all, I apologize for not writing more sooner, but I've either been doing things that are not noteworthy enough to find a place on the blog, or too busy with said things to write properly about the few things that have been noteworthy enough to belong here.  But now I've got a nice empty evening with which to spend with you all.  And I'm happy for it.  I've been wanting to tell this story properly, and this is the first chance I have to really set it out straight.  So here goes.

Part I - Birth of the White Devil

This all starts with the arrival of my dogs, Dagny and Lucy.  One concern I had was that after all the time, hassle (both for me and many others), money (more than I'd like to admit), frustration, government intervention and red tape involved in getting them here, my dogs would not get along with the dogs that were already here, namely Luana and Kiko.  Kiko was the source of a few worrisome events at first (like biting right on the haunches the first time they met - fortunately for all he got nothing but fur, and Dags just gave him a "So what?" look, and that was the end of it), but it all just turned out to be him posturing to protect his own view as the alpha male of the farm dogs.  And as he's the only male, he's really only alpha male in title alone, and the other dogs typically offer him no deference or submission.  Apart from Lucy, of course.  You know how submissive she is.

So I kept a careful eye on Dagny, waiting for the time that one of the other dogs crossed some unseen line that only dogs know about, waiting for all hell to break loose in a melee of fur and teeth and barking and blood.  And, of course, that never happened.  Much to my relief, all the dogs got along quite well together, except for Luana.  She really just seemed mostly ambivalent, and steered clear of my dogs when she could, and at the times she couldn't (pigs up on the road, neighbor at the gate, etc.), she was right there with all of the other dogs, and so it appeared that everything was fine.

Until three weeks ago.

K&K were on Oahu, I had all the dogs to myself, and it was a drizzly, gray morning.  I'd just finished my coffee, and was heading back to the yurt to figure out what to do with the day.  I told Kiko and Luana to get in their houses....there was a pause....and then the fight broke out.  Just like that.  Lucy and Luana were all over each other.  I stood there for a moment and thought, "Maybe this is just a scrap to determine pecking order or something, and I should let it resolve itself," but then I quickly saw that Lucy meant business, Dagny and Kiko were thinking about getting involved, and it was going to be trouble.  So I reached into the tumbling ball of fur, saliva, and menacing growls and yips, and I pulled Lucy out of it.  Hoisting her onto my shoulder stopped the whole thing.  I kept them separated the next day.

To make a very long story at least a little bit shorter, the Lu vs. Lu battle got better, then worse, then a little better, then a lot worse over the matter of a week.  Lucy had punctures behind one ear, along her side, and one on each cheek.  Luana had a bite on her hip and a really nasty gash on her foot.  In the last fight, Kalewa and I each grabbed a dog, and Lucy had Luana's foot held so tightly in her mouth that our first lifting tug didn't pull them apart.  After a few more grumbles and would-be fights (had I not had Lucy on a leash....and picked her up, as Luana now taunts her at not being able to fight), I finally decided that this was more than just a limited event, and I need to keep Lucy away.

During this time, though, as we were all trying to figure out why the fights were happening, Lucy received the nickname "La Diabla Blanca."  I don't even know if you can feminize "Diablo" to "Diabla" in Spanish, but I did, and that's that.   I figured it was her Luchador name, and she deserved it, as she (whatever the instigation was) was always the first to basically say "It's ON!" and lunge at Luana. So the White Devil was born, but seemed to pay no mind to her new moniker. In fact, she even started responding to it from time to time.

There are theories going around the farm as to the causes of the fights.  One such theory is that it's a fight over the name.  Both think they are "Loo," and the fact that the other responds is somehow insulting.  There's also the theory that they're somehow tying me into some kind of weird love triangle (as some believe that Luana sees me as her favorite) and so each fight begins with "Nuh-uh! He's mine, b*tch!" (see? I can do that because they're both dogs) and then suddenly it's an episode of Jerry Springer without the chair-throwing (but only because they don't have thumbs....or chairs).  There have even been theories that this is all gang-related violence, not unlike the whole East Coast/West Coast thing between rappers a while back, only now it's North Side/South Side of the stream.  If you've got a theory of your own, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Part II - Mutts Abroad

So I started up the routine that when I was up front, my dogs were put away in the yurt, and when I was on the yurt side of the stream, Dags and Lucy could run around to their hearts' content. And it worked great.

For about 4 days.

One day, I was back behind the yurt planting pineapple. Because that's what I do. Of course the dogs were hanging out, Dags as usual in the shade and nice cool area under the yurt, and Lucy feeling either fascinated by something she's found, or feeling put out for not having found anything about which to be fascinated.  At least, that's where I thought they were. After a nice productive run of planting, I stopped to stretch, and looked for the dogs. Lucy was nowhere to be found, but that's not too odd. Usually she's off in the nearby bushes aggressively pursuing skinks or mice or frogs or whatever moves. But Dagny was not under the yurt, and this was very troublesome indeed. Very rarely does Dagny wander off, and when she does, it's for short periods of time, and it's not that far away. So I figured it was just one of those times, gave a quick "Hey, come back!" secret whistle that Dags and I have, and tried to not worry about it.

But after about an hour, and a gunshot in the distance, I decided that these dogs needed to be searched for rather than awaited. Having no idea which direction they went, I took my best guess and headed southeast. Down past the greenhouse and then through the overgrown California grass across the little concrete crossing of the intermittent stream, and then up the next hill to the long runs of pineapple planted last year, I whistled and hollered and called for the dogs. Nothing. Knowing that Lucy won't cross any stream that requires her to get wet, I knew they had very few choices if they went any further in this direction.

And suddenly, very much to my surprise, Lucy popped out of the underbrush. She's filthy, she's worn out, she saw me, and she knew she's in trouble. I told her to sit (and miraculously, she did so without question) and I wondered where Dagny could be, since she's always...ALWAYS...the first one back. I called for her again, and I heard some yelling from down below. I didn't think much of it, since Crazy Goat Lady lives over there, and she keeps to herself, and we keep away from her. So I called for Dags again, and once more I got a yelled (yet incoherent) reply from down below. I can't see anyone down there, but I started to wonder what was going on. It seemed like CGL was mad that I was making such a racket. So walked to the edge of the drop and I yelled back: "I'm just looking for my dog!" to which I got the response "I *expletive* know, she's *expletive* right *expletive* *something something something....* It's just kinda trailed off to nothing. So I looked at Lucy. I told her to stay. I knew she wouldn't, but I hoped she'd at least stay long enough to forget about me, and head back to the yurt. I knew that wouldn't happen either, since she is La Diabla Blanca and all, but I was facing the Crazy Goat Lady here, and I was trying to be optimistic.

After staying Lucy as best as I figured I could, I looked at the overgrown, jungley slope below, and went to retreive my dog.

Part III - The Trek Down

Let me begin by sharing a little history about the Crazy Goat Lady.  Ok...  I have no actual "history" to share, but there are a few stories and rumors and scuttlebutt around the neighborhood.  So I reckon I'll share those instead, because hey, that's all I had to go on walking into this situation.

1) She's originally from South Africa

2) She has at least one goat

3) She has a dog that I hear howling the most heartbreaking howl at least 4 times a week

4) Some unknown time ago, her husband left her for her son's fiancee, which tore the whole family apart (with good reason) and she had a breakdown and moved out into the boonies to get as far away from it all as possible.

5) When K&K were building the bridge across the stream, CGL wandered over from her property, dressed in nothing but her undies, wondering what all the hammering was about (the hammering was finished many days before, K&K were mixing and pouring concrete into the forms that day)

6) Souza, the guy up the road (and subject for another post) believes she's a.... umm...feminine practitioner of the dark arts......

.....and refers to her only as such.

7) She was not always Crazy Goat Lady.  She was Crazy Underwear Lady until it was discovered that she had goats.  I'm not clear on the exact reason for the name change was deemed necessary.  Fewer questions, I suppose.
8) She also has chickens (I can hear them too) but she's not Crazy Chicken Lady.

************

I forced my way down the hill as best as I could.  The trees, brush, and grasses have a way of seemingly filling every cubic inch of space from the ground up, until it's at least five feet high.  And then it starts to thin out a little.  Hiking down the hill was difficult, but eventually I just pushed everything down in front of me, and walked over it like a mat.  I called to CGL in order to get a sense of where she was, and her long list of swear words seemed to be coming from a little to the left of straight ahead.  I adjusted course, and plodded on.  After a couple of minutes, I heard more swearing, with a few other words mixed in, suggesting I was sure taking my sweet time getting down there.  But the odd thing was it was ahead of me and to the right.  I know I was heading in a straight line, because:
A) I had a good line of sight to a koa tree in the distance, and
B) I had a path behind me of matted down grass that showed I wasn't turning at all.

This lady was moving around between tirades, and it was not helping me one bit.

Finally, after several course adjustments, I was able to hear her talking with someone else, and was able to follow that out of the undergrowth.  Of course before I cleared it, she went off again, in a way to make a sailor blush, at the top of her lungs.  I remember thinking to myself, "Be careful, Cameron. She sounds like she's on the verge of getting angry." And I chuckled at that.  Then I thought "I wonder if she's going to pick a fight....  Oh Good Lord I hope she has some clothes on."  And then, of course, I then immediately thought, "CRAP!  And here I am once again without my potato rake! When will I learn?"

Part IV - The White Flower

I entered a small clearing, with a yard and a house above, a big stand of bamboo to the right, and thick jungle to my left and (of course) behind me.  On the opposite edge of the clearing, up against some ferns, was a lady in her sixties or so, a young boy about thirteen, and Dagny.  Thankfully, Dagny looked ok, although she was obviously frazzled, exhausted, and more than a little freaked out by this screaming and apparently heartless woman.  Even more thankfully than that, both the woman and the boy were fully dressed.

I took Dagny by the collar, and gave her a once-over, completely ignoring the swearing and furious rant that was filling the tiny clearing and beyond.  After reassuring Dags that all will be well, I waited for CGL to take a breath, and I decided to play it cool.  I immediately apologized for my dog getting away from me, and for the trouble she apparently caused.  "She didn't get into your chickens, did she?" It turns out that she didn't really do anything but trespass, and that her presence on the property agitated the "chickens, the donkey, the goats, the turkey, and Scooter."  Upon hearing his name, Scooter shows up.  He's a nice-looking border collie who gives me a look like "Yep.  I put up with this lady, and I'm still cool... that's how cool I am."  And he was certainly pretty cool.

Anyway, I apologized again, and said that I was thankful that no harm was done, and that I'd do my best to make sure my dog didn't trespass again. She asked where I lived, and I told her I lived in the yurt on top of the hill, and I work on a farm there.  She asked if I worked for "those young people" and I said yes.  Of course that threw her literally into fits, and she started ranting about the noise and the view and the hollering and the HAMMERING!  Even today, all of the HAMMERING!!!

Now, since I was actually on the farm all day, I knew for a fact that there was no hammering going on.  Kaleo and I were planting pineapples, and Kalewa was fertilizing.  So I figured it wouldn't be too defensive or provoke her too much if I pointed this out to her, in hopes that her obvious hatred for K&K might reveal itself to be at least partially misplaced.  So I told her no one's been making any noise today except that Kalewa has been running the motorized sprayer...

"SPRAYING!?!?!?!??"

You know the expression "blow your top"?  I now realize I'd never really understood it until that moment.  As she yelled "SPRAYING!?!?!?!??" at the top of her lungs, she raised her clenched fists to the air, and not just her knuckles turned white, but her whole hands...I'll never forget that.  I could literally see all of her energy moving up through her body to her head, presumably to make the proper expression of disgust, anger, and hatred, and at the same time give birth unto the world some completely new swear word that would itself rain fire and brimstone upon it's target.

Simultaneously, I felt an overwhelming urge to completely lose my temper and an overwhelming urge to just laugh.  Now I think that either could have ended very badly for me.  Fortunately, the urges cancelled each other out.  All that was left was mild annoyance.

So, and not without a fair amount of contempt, and just prior to the pinnacle of her rage, I interrupted, "Settle down."

She spun around at me.  I seriously thought she was going to slap me, and that might have seemed a fair reaction to her, because she looked like I'd just slapped her.

"He's spraying Fish Amino Acids.....  You know, natural farming? Master Cho?  It's the new big thing around the island right now."

And that flipped a switch somehow.  Immediately she apologized about being so rude, explaining how she'd had a bad couple of days with some car trouble and something about some people in town, and how maybe my dog wasn't exactly stupid, maybe just old, how old is she again? 9? Yes, I'm sure she's just old, not that stupid blah blah blah all congenial and polite.\

My first thought: "She's bipolar.....and possibly off of her meds."

Somehow the nice CGL was scarier than the angry one.  Something about that instant turnaround was creepy even to me, and I don't get creeped out very easily.  But I tried to mend a fence or two with a little conversation, in hopes that I'd be able to make some headway for any future issues that might pop up (heaven forbid).  So I said that I think we got off on the wrong foot, and I introduced myself, and I introduced Dagny. I was formally introduced to Scooter (who doesn't howl....he "sings") and to Luis, the young boy I'd completely forgotten was there until then.  She also introduced herself as Pua Kea, which means White Flower or White Blossom.  Knowing that she was from South Africa, I made the assumption that Pua Kea was not her name at birth, and that it was given to her sometime after her arrival here.  My gut instinct is that she gave it to herself, because if someone else gave it to her, it was either another haole (like myself) who really had no right to, or it was a local who was being a bit insulting.  But those are just my thoughts, and there's a lot of my own bias in all of those assumptions, so who really knows?

Anyway, pretty much everything was as hunky-dory as it could have been in that bizarre moment, so I said I should probably be taking my dog back home.  She pointed out that there's no path back to the property.  I immediately thought "Yeah there is. It's through your yard, up your driveway, and up the road to my place," but I didn't think it'd be polite for me to point that out.  So I said I'd just head south to the stream and then follow that back up to the property.  She said the stream was on the other side of the bamboo, and that I just needed to cut through that and I'd be fine.  I started into the bamboo, and the lady offered a few vague instructions from some distance.  I found another clearing in the bamboo, with what looked like a good start to an approach up the hill, but upon entering the clearing, I sank to my knees in mud.  Fortunately Dagny was smart enough (and it didn't take much) to stay clear.

The process of extricating myself from the Big Island equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits ended up covering my legs in slimy mud up above my knees, up both arms to the middle of my biceps, and cost me both of my shoes.  The boy Luis stood by and watched with amusement.  In the middle of it, trying to see if I could dig out my shoes, I looked over to him and said "Don't come in here," and smiled.

He got a kick out of it.

In the hours and days that have followed, I've often wondered just what the heck that kid was doing there.  He's obviously not her son, and he's not exactly old enough to be working.  Besides, it was a school day, although it was the end of the semester.  There's no logical reason for him to be there.  I've been running through my mind over and over the few times I looked at him, making sure that there was never any undue stress on his face, or some kind of message, or some glance that really meant "HELP! HER HOUSE IS MADE OF CANDY AND SHE MAKES ME SLEEP IN THE OVEN!" but none of that's there.  He was just a kid who was there who enjoyed watching me get out of the mud, but not in a mean way, but in one of curiosity, and I can respect that, because I'd feel the same way in his shoes (which were not lost in the mud).

Part V - The Journey Home

After my "fun in the mud" (soon to be the new Kaiwiki tourism slogan), I followed Dagny to the stream.  Somehow I'd gotten turned around, and the stream was running the opposite direction from which I'd expected.  In retrospect, it wasn't so much that it was running the wrong way, but that it was the wrong stream.  Still, I should have stuck with my plan and followed it, because even though there's a 20' waterfall before my property, there are a lot of good places to climb out of it before then.  But in my infinite wisdom (a.k.a. stupidity), I decided to hike out right there instead.

Now I've had a lot of bad ideas in my life.  More than I can count.  There was the time I tried to throw a rock at the yard light in the church parking lot and missed and hit the hood of my parents' car instead, for instance.  Basically, my life is just a chain of these bad ideas which are held together by many good times during which I'm not required to have any ideas at all.  This idea to hike out right there ranks pretty high up on the list.  Definitely in the Top 40 Casey Kasem Countdown.

So I start to walk up through the uluhe (pronounced oo-LOO-hey).  That's right. Remember how I descended to CGL's place?  It's all uphill now, Baby.  Oh, and you remember how I made that path down to the clearing?  Yeah....that was on the north side of the clearing, and the stream was to the south, so I was nowhere near it, and just decided to make a new path.  GENIUS.

So, to give you a third-party account of what I was walking through, please take a moment to peruse this brief article.  The photos are pretty, but do the plant no justice whatsoever.  My favorite quotes are:

....they grow in thickets up to 10 feet high and can comprise 80% of the ecosystem biomass. It is punishing to hike through uluhe — their fronds are vine-like and interweave each other making passage difficult, time-consuming, and exhausting. They also have woody stems that scratch anyone unwise enough to wade through a thicket of uluhe with unprotected legs and arms.

and:

Uluhe begin life as a purple coil that shoots straight out from the ground. As the shoot uncurls a striking bifurcating pattern unfolds. The fern branches into two fronds which splits into two more fronds over and again in a repeating pattern. This bifurcating branching patterns allows the fern to behave like a crawling vine that interweaves with other uluhe ferns to form dense thickets

To quote The Three Amigos - "If only we had known this earlier...."

So there I was working my way through a jungle, up a hill, through this stuff, wearing only board shorts and a t-shirt.  There were fallen logs that I couldn't see, because the uluhe is taller than I am, and of course there were plenty of holes as well, and sometimes you've just got to fall into them. The good news is that I figured we only had somewhere between one hundred and two hundred feet to go to reach our property, which is all cleared and easy walking.  Oh, and please don't forget: I'm also now bare-footed.

"Ok," I told myself, "I can do this.  200 feet.  No problem."

And then I turned to Dagny. "You can do this too. We just need to get home."

And I started working a path.

Alright...."working a path" is not the best term.  "Walking in place" would be much more accurate.  Dagny, still sitting, not having moved an inch since we got to the uluhe, gave me the same "I have no idea what you're doing, you moron" look she gave me when I was mired in the mud.  So I stopped worrying about impact on the scenery, and just start pushing the stuff down and walking over it.  It was much more difficult going up than it was on the way down, but at least I was making progress.  

I called Dags to follow, and the sweetheart that she is, she did.  The hill started getting steeper.  The plants somehow got thicker.  I had to go back and help Dagny over a few fallen logs that she couldn't get under or find a way around.  Eventually, it got to the point where she couldn't even walk through the stuff I'd matted down.  It was so thick that I was standing at least a foot above the ground, and Dagny's smaller feet were just poking through and trapping her there.  Twice she turned tail on me, starting back down the hill and I could almost hear her say "Screw this....I'm going back to the crazy lady...that's better than this."  But I convinced her that we only had.....  ugh.   We'd only gone 25 feet.

I could hear CGL screaming about something again. For all I knew, it was about me wrecking her view of the uluhe.  Or maybe she found out Luis wasn't self-basting.  I had no idea, and I didn't care.  I just needed to get home.

So, since Dagny couldn't walk through the whole mess, there was only one option.  I had to carry her.  To be fair, she's lost some weight since arriving, but she's still over seventy pounds.  Not fun.

I started by picking her up and trying to push down the brush with each step, but that didn't work.  So I set her down, pushed down the next fifteen feet or so, went back, picked her up, and carried her to the end of the trail.  Then I repeated that process.  Over and over again.  Some places were about as steep as stairs.  There's one place I had to run (as best as I could) up a very steep hill, up about 8 feet to the top where I'd stopped trailblazing, and we just fell forward into the uluhe, and if there was a hole, there was a hole; we'd figure that out on the way down.

Dagny struggled at first, but eventually (and disturbingly) gave up completely and started acting like the piece of baggage I could tell she thought she was.  If, after the fall into the untouched uluhe, I left her on her back, she stayed on her back.  If she was on her side, she stayed on her side.  She even got to the point where she didn't move her head to look at what was going on.  The first time that happened, I thought I'd fallen somehow on something and broken her neck.  But no....she was fine.  Just completely resigned to being carried out of there.

Finally I saw the dead tree that I knew was on the edge of our property. It was just another 40 feet ahead.  It took five more pushes to get through and out of that mess. I started thinking in the last three pushes that the reason CGL had last screamed was that Lucy had gone looking for us.  La Diabla Blanca, with her ultimate curiosity and gigantic ears, would have heard the talking, heard the struggling in the mud, heard me talking to Dagny, and she would have come down to see what's going on.  I was going to have to do this all again: down and up again, highs and lows of bipolar Crazy Goat Lady....but at least this time I'd avoid the mud.

At last breaking through to open ground, putting Dagny down for the last time (at which point she got up, shook once, and then acted as if nothing had happened), and there was Lucy, not exactly where I'd stayed her, but quite close.  I realized something right then.  Lucy has always been a good dog. Sure, she's a bit of a barker, and sure, she doesn't always (or often) listen, and sure she likes to roll in things that smell bad.  But she's always been good enough for me to think of her as a good dog.  But I'd never really had that feeling of pride at her behavior until that day.  That day when I told her to stay and against all odds, she did stay right there and wait the 50 minutes it took me to walk 300 feet, down and up in a stupid loop.  And she didn't even bark once.

She may be the White Devil in jest, but for that hour and beyond, she was an angel.

Afterward:  

For the curious about the uluhe, I did receive cuts on my forearms and hands, my shins, and three cuts on the bottoms of my feet, which are the worst.  On the upside, the uluhe cleaned all of the mud off of my arms and legs so the only proof I was there at all was the mud stains on my board shorts and the loss of my shoes.

I'm certain that this is the longest post I've ever written, and I'm sure I'll hear about that.  But I really just wanted to get the story down, since it was so physically and emotionally involved, and really this blog is just an open diary, so I figure I needed to get this event down.

No, I haven't heard from CGL since these events, although her dog likes to bark when I'm on the the back deck.  I'm sure that'll be a new complaint next time I see her.  But we have put a fence up around the yurt since, and any future run-ins should have nothing to do with my dogs.

Crazy? Check.

Goat? Check.

Lady? As far as I could tell, she had the correct parts.  Check.