02-19-2014, 05:28 PM
Least of your worries. Agree with the above--- Centipedes. Centipedes. Centipedes. They will make you want to hug a gecko (very gently -- they are easy to smash). Something about the way centipedes look just goes right down to DNA level and raises hackles. You are fortunate if you see them if they are present. Better seen than felt. Geckos on the other hand are considered good luck and well liked enough they are used to sell insurance. Inexplicably, they do that with an English accent.
And there is that matter of the lava slowly burning its way through the forest in our general direction or that special chill you get when the tsunami siren goes off and you are close to the ocean. Or that smell of BBQ, when no one is BBQ'ing. Or when you ignore the flash flood warnings, because there never is any flash flood and because you just GOTTA go to Hilo, only to get caught in a flash flood, with cars stalled and logs floating in front of your car.
Other frightening things include drag queens with chainsaws, anyone hanging around in front of the former Cash & Carry (they still miss it!), anyone claiming to be able to assist with audio at Kalani, your doctor, certain drifty, lazy-tongued cashiers at the "health food stores", the preternaturally calm local guys on NPR who sound like they just smoked some of Puna's finest and they are doing the broadcast in one long exhalation, and the general feeling that maybe you DID take too much acid in the sixties and that you are now permanently living in an in an album cover from that era.
More frightening than all of this, though, is the thought of being transported back to a less stimulating place. Normality, and the people who live in it, will all come to seem a little odd.
And there is that matter of the lava slowly burning its way through the forest in our general direction or that special chill you get when the tsunami siren goes off and you are close to the ocean. Or that smell of BBQ, when no one is BBQ'ing. Or when you ignore the flash flood warnings, because there never is any flash flood and because you just GOTTA go to Hilo, only to get caught in a flash flood, with cars stalled and logs floating in front of your car.
Other frightening things include drag queens with chainsaws, anyone hanging around in front of the former Cash & Carry (they still miss it!), anyone claiming to be able to assist with audio at Kalani, your doctor, certain drifty, lazy-tongued cashiers at the "health food stores", the preternaturally calm local guys on NPR who sound like they just smoked some of Puna's finest and they are doing the broadcast in one long exhalation, and the general feeling that maybe you DID take too much acid in the sixties and that you are now permanently living in an in an album cover from that era.
More frightening than all of this, though, is the thought of being transported back to a less stimulating place. Normality, and the people who live in it, will all come to seem a little odd.