I laughed outloud!

I was doing recommenations this week for candidates from Tongan. They are interesting people.  They are very pound that they are from the great Nation of Tonga.  They are loyal to each other and to their heritage. It is interesting that they are very good fisherman but they do not like to swim!  If someone in New Zealand drowns their first question is:  Were they Tongan.  So this is the background you need to understand ths funny.

OK...I have to enter the endorsement that the bishop and stake president write about the candidate  This is what one Bishop wrote.  Remember what I said at the start of this.

She is a good girl.  She was President of  the Mermaids.  She loves to swim.





What a funny endorsement!

A Sad Tale

I learned today about a very sad tale.  Some of you might remember that Matt really liked the Tasmanian Devil.

I have learned that they are can get to be able 30 inches long and have a body kind of like a bear. They are down-right mean if they get the feeling that their mate or babies or meal are being threatened.  The mother devil is only pregnant for 3 weeks and then the babies (20-30 of them) continue to grow in the pouch, like a kangaroo.  But the mum can only feed four of them at a time so many of them do not survive.  

So why share this?  These weird little animals are becoming extinct because of a contagious cancer!  It is a facial cancer that causes tumors to grow on its face. When they get so big the little devil cannot eat and they starve to death!  Nearly 85% of the numbers have died.

To prevent their total extinction the Australian government has a Tasmanian devil insurance program.  They have taken to breeding them in captivity and keeping them totally way from any of the animals that have the disease.  Their plan is what all the Tasmanian in the wild have died off they will be able to reintroduce the ones in captivity back into the wild and the animal will be restored.  

I never would have thought about doing that!

Cyclone Lusi

We became aware of a fore casted cyclone on Wednesday.  We took the precautions of getting a few things in case we got hungry and checked to see if our torch (flashlight) worked and that I knew where the matches were in the event we lost power.  We did not and we were not starving 4 hours later after it hit when I went across the street to buy bagels.  When I was out I drove by the beach.  The water was pretty angry!  Today we walked and saw the mess Lusi left behind.

You can see in this photo how the beach was re-sculptured.  It is usually a very smooth sand.

This is a photo of the seaweed left behind.  You can see Dad way ahead on the left in dark pants and a white shirt.  The man in the middle without the shirt was search for scallop shells. He only wanted the ones that were still alive.  Dinner I am sure.  YUCK!

You can see from this photo all of the seaweed floating in the water.  There were no swimmers in this part of the ocean.  Not surprised at all about that!  Gross.

Birds of a Feather

We have been trying to walk around as much of Lake Pupuke as possible. It is really hard since there are houses that have lake-front property and so you cannot walk all the way around but we have been walking on all the public land.  It is fun to see it the lake from a different perspective.  We had a lovely walk last week and topped it off with a trip to our newly found favorite bagel shop. (Incidentally we found it four weeks ago and it is less than a three minute walk from our flat.)  Anyway, we had a nice walk and saw some fun things....birds being among those things we saw.

First we saw some swans, black ones with red bills. Some were very large and from the mess of the feathers it was obvious that they were old birds.  But we did find some other birds. One I know but the other I cannot identify.  For the one I know.  It is an pukeko.

They are found all over New Zealand but like it best around water. They are often considered a pest because they will pick at the grass or at new plants and eat them.  I think they are fun to watch. They kind of have a funny walk.

The other bird that we saw that day is still unknown to me.  We came upon it as it landed by the lake. 

As we walked up to it we could see the water on its feathers.  Then, slowly he began to open them.  

He sat on the same spot and kind of turned to the right and to the left for about three minutes.  A small boy and his mother walked up behind them and the bird flew across the water and landed again, opening his wings. He sat there for more than ten minutes, warming and drying himself.

It was a nice pleasant day.  I am not sure how I will find out what kind of bird this is but I will keep looking.