One Week To Go

Okay I know I haven’t been very diligent about keeping up with the blog. No excuse really, just lazy I guess.
Not a lot happening over the last week; we did have a plane come in last weekend, so there’s fresh eggs, fruit and salad back on the menu. We played volleyball Saturday night on the beach behind Drifter’s. The sand is full of big chunks of coral so lots of people were complaining of cut feet and scraped knees the next day. That seems to be the most common injury we see. I actually have a fair amount of experience with ocean related injuries, like jelly fish stings, and sting ray envenomation, but those don’t seem to come up much, either in my experience or historically from what I can gather.
The Air Force sent a crew to do some kind of sampling and testing on the water supply; with them is a young woman, so the odds have improved 100% for the men. Now when you go to Drifters there are two clumps of guys, instead of one.
The mystery rat has been identified. It is rattus tanezumi, the “asian house rat”. Speculation is that it came with the refugees from Viet Nam who were housed here after the Saigon evacuation. They are still working on the e”rat”ication plan. The problem seems to be that the rats are too well fed. They don’t like what they’re being offered and there isn’t an approved coconut flavored rat poison. I know I’ve felt like I would die after drinking Pina Coladas; we should just ship the rats to a Sandals resort.
We took a walk on Wilkes Island this afternoon. It’s the southeasterly most part of the atoll, and a bird sanctuary. There are zillions of birds nesting there and they were none too pleased with our presence..The main characters are black footed boobys and red footed boobys, as well as a frigate bird I got a lot of cool pictures; also collected some bird dropping specimens.
Tonight was the big Wake Island Ping Pong tournament. I watched some of the Thais play –it was pretty scary. I did not enter.
Only a few more chances left to dive. We’re going to do a lot this weekend if we can. I also want to do a little more kayaking around the lagoon before I leave. I might even try to take the catamaran out. I’m definitely a short timer now.