Will They Make It To Cuba?

one of the great things about this life is that you learn so much about the natural world. to share what we have learned we are beginning the taio wildlife series, exclusively for our group gropesters.

this will be a great change of pace for you red meat eaters who are probably sick to death of our encounters with dolphins and whales. ok, so they got two lungs, a blowhole and a bigger brain than me, so what. right? and what the heck is wrong with a bit of dolphin in the tuna salad, anyway?

so, for you, gentle readers.....

la cucaracha

cucaracha is spanish for cockroach for you unilinguists. you ain,t never seen a cockroach until you,ve seen the tropical and especially puerto rican variety. the ubiquitous cockroach is a frequent pest of boats. we tried to keep them out by avoiding bringing cardboard aboard but they probably climbed up the dock lines. now we know to saturate the lines with raid.
we,ve only seen 3 but these mothers are gigantic. i figure half a dozen working together could kidnap a small child. an unlikely possibility for the charming and friendly but somehat disorganized and overly bureaucratic puerto rican cockroach. there,d be too many arguments about which part of the kid was in whose jurisdiction. bermudan cockroaches would get it together no problem but where do you get six-legged shorts?

there,s an upside to everything, however. when the first cucaracha grande made its appearance, carol leapt up on the settee and screamed "eek!!" you can take all your betty friedan,s and other spokespersons for equality of enslavement by the economic system, smoke your virginia slims, develop male pattern baldness maybe. but in the crunch, the broad leaps up on the chair going "eek" and the person with the XY chromosome is down there in the killing field with the rolled up copy of cruising world. plus ca change.

carol is resigned to exterminating our stowaways with environmentally friendly boric acid. this is a big leap for her, contemplating snuffing the little buggers. i patiently explained, however that they will simply be reincarnated, which makes it cool, sort of like giving the great wheel of life a little extra spin.

if no one killed cockroaches to be reincarnated, where would tomorrow,s lawyers and politicians come from? on second thought, maybe we should stop the killing now.
boric acid,s ok but i,m prepared to fill the boat with agent orange, let it soak for a week, the pump it out with all the bloated little corpses.

the anglerfish

the female anglerfish has the exact shape, texture, colour and overall appearance of a rather large human female buttock with terminal cellulite. (carol has asked me to state categorically that i know this only from pictures in anatomy texts from when i was taking correspondence courses in forensic pathology and not from personal experience.)
that the anglerfish could attract a mate at all seems unlikely but in fact it does attract a male. lovers of spinal tap,s "big bottom" will understand. talk about mud flaps, this girl,s got ,em.

the male anglerfish is only about a twentieth of the size of the female. he clamps on (and i mean til death do us part) to the female,s posterior.
you libbers who were offended by the cockroach instalment will appreciate the next step. the male then becomes totally parasitic, sucking all of his sustenance out of big momma. so painfully typical, isn,t it girls?

his sole function for the rest of his pathetic existence is to put the blocks to the love of his life whenever she doesn,t have a headache and demands his services. there being such an enormous difference in size, he tries very hard to please.
as spinal tap said so succinctly, "how can i leave this behind?"taio wildlife vignette #3
the sea cucumber

we saw many sea cucumbers in the british virgins but good taste forbade including the gory details in our logs. that,s right out the window now, so here is the exciting story of our unique friend, the sea cucumber.
these animals look like a length of brownish-gray vacuum cleaner hose about 18" long. they just kind of lie there in the coral with pretty multi-coloured fish darting about. all very idyllic,
isn,t it?

yeah, right. that,s why i,m writing about them.
the really interesting thing about sea cucumbers is their anuses (ani?). aside from the obvious function, they breathe through their anuses. if frightened, they eject all their digestive tract, their gonads and respiratory sysyem through their anuses at their pursuer. this causes a few moments of confusion amongst the predator class, and our buddy retires to a quiet corner where he grows a new set of everything. anal retentive these things aren,t.
some sea cucumbers have a small fish as an anal tenant. the fish leaves each day for his job on the reef and returns home each evening to his cozy little house, the sea cucumber relaxing just a bit to let mr. fish in.

i am not making this stuff up. some of these guys have teeth in their anuses. probably even darwin didn,t know why. you can well imagine the hazards of some alternative lifestyles in the briny deep. scarcely bears thinking about, really.

to register your disgust with the taio wildlife series, email my official representative, bob@metalcraftmarine.com