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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Stealing nene street signs
is a real no-noMany years ago my wife and I were standing on a cliff on the island of Saipan where Japanese soldiers had thrown themselves off to avoid the indignity of being captured by U.S. forces. Japanese tourists had set up little memorials to the dead at cliffside, thin wooden slats with Japanese characters beautifully painted on them.
Being the insensitive lug I was back then, I said, "You know, honey, a couple of those would look pretty cool on our wall."
She turned white (or whiter) and grabbed my hand as I went to retrieve one of the objets d'art and shrieked, "Are you crazy?" Then she babbled (in a charming, hardly embarrassing way at all) about the ill-advised nature of desecrating burial sites and how the ghosts of dead Japanese soldiers would haunt our apartment and the like.
So I didn't take any of the little slats, but our clothes washer sprung a leak, flooding the kitchen shortly after that, which she ascribed to my even thinking about taking the little Japanese signs. That surprised me because I figured if I were the ghost of a dead Japanese soldier, I'd have better things to do than mess with appliances.
I guess this is a roundabout way of saying I sort of understand why some tourists stole a couple of "Nene Crossing" signs at Kilauea Crater recently.
Nene are a cute little endangered species that waddle on the ground for about 11 to 14 weeks after hatching, when they finally learn to fly. Family groups generally remain in the breeding ground for another month, then wander around looking for food after that.
Roadways are perilous to waddling birds, and nene are in danger-danger of becoming flat-flat by car-cars. So the signs alerting drivers to crossing genetic misfits is important.
I'M SURE whoever stole the signs simply thought they'd look cool on their house or apartment wall. All I can say to these miscreants is, keep a mop handy. If the spirits of smashed nene are anything like the ghosts of dead soldiers, major cleanup could be in your future.
It's the same when tourists take lava rocks from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and find weird, horrible things suddenly happening in their lives. Everyone knows that stolen lava rocks bring bad luck because, unlike other forms of rocks that actually enjoy a trip now and then, lava rocks like to stay where they are. People who have taken lava rocks home with them to the mainland have reported curious events like stubbing their toes repeatedly and having flat tires. And because stubbed toes and flat tires are such rare and scary things, they mail the rocks back to the Big Island pronto to quell the curse.
The fact is that the myth of the bad luck of lava rocks was invented by a haole park ranger with a little time on his hands. Nevertheless, tourists should fight the urge to abscond with rocks, street signs and grave markers because they actually look cooler where they are instead of some crummy apartment.
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Charles Memminger, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' 2004 First Place Award winner for humor writing, appears Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com