Animals, Arthropods and PTSD

Mongooses are small squirrel-like creatures that abound in Hawaii. In the late nineteenth century they had been imported to Hawaii to control the rat population, which was damaging the sugar cane. Someone didn’t do their homework because mongooses are mostly active during the day and the rat is mostly a night creature. Mongooses also breed like crazy and they have no natural predators in Hawaii, so they are ubiquitous. They are too big to catch in rat traps but it was a fun pastime for us to set traps and watch them get their noses snapped.

There was lots of open land behind the Barnabas House going up Hualalai. One day Samuel and I decided to go hiking up the mountain. On the way we found a horse tied up in a field. I had some kind of affinity for horses and didn’t like to see it tied up like that. I untied it and set it free – idiot. We saw it again on our way back down. Fortunately, someone had found it roaming around and tied it back up on the side of the road so its owner could find it. 

Hawaii has plenty of centipedes and scorpions and some of the centipedes get very big. I was always scared of them but Samuel used to catch them, take off their poisonous parts and let them crawl around on him. His poisonous arthropod wrangling skills both fascinated and horrified the ladies to whom he loved to do both. I don’t believe he ever got stung.

Despite being in a Christian mission, my father placed a high emphasis on making sure we attended a local church. In those days, Hawaii had a lot of veterans and hippies and there was a Southern Baptist pastor who was reaching out to them. My dad believed he was supposed to work with this man and this church and we met outside at Hale Halawai park by the ocean. The pastor ended up ordaining my father as a Southern Baptist.

The Hale Halawai park was also the scene of another unforgettable event in our family history. The ocean next to the park is fronted by lava rock with sharp barnacles and such and can be very dangerous. And there was a lady in Hawaii who was, as we say, a bit off her rocker. 

One day they found this lady trying to swim in the ocean at the park while belting out a popular Christian song in a very high-pitched, operatic voice. She was getting beat up against the rocks and my father had to rescue her. He brought her back to the Barnabas House and she kept singing the song over and over again. Nobody really sings the song anymore but whenever I hear it, I get PTSD from that incident.

Comments

  1. Ben WilsonAugust 17, 2020 at 9:48 PM

    So what’s the song???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Stephen WilliamsAugust 18, 2020 at 8:12 AM

      Do not ask me to utter the words of that which I do not speak. It will bring it all back and exacerbate my PTSD.

      Delete

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