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May 27, 2006
Mongooses, not mongeese
KOHALA COAST, HAWAI'I -- I've been looking up a lot of plural words today. The first is "men-of-war," plural of man-of-war. This is because CNN has a picture of Hapuna Beach on their website tonight. They didn't mention the swarm of Portugese men-of-war that arrived this afternoon, which stung a number of people today. Fortunately that didn't interrupt Kim's rehearsal dinner on the poolside, which was fabulous.
The second plural is "mongooses," the plural of mongoose. I nearly ran over several of these little critters today. They look like a dauschaund crossed with a squirrel as they scurry across the street. They were introduced to control the rat problems in Hawai'i, which they do effectively, but they also eat the eggs of birds and pushed several species into endangered status.
Other than these notable plurals, I had an interesting whale-watching experience off the far northern coast of Hawai'i, near the strait with Maui. After going through 20 miles of desert, I turned into a State Park and watched the ocean for a few minutes. A pod of whales, perhaps a dozen, was circling and attacking a very large game fish, perhaps a marlin. Whenever they got ahold of the fish, it leaped head-first into the air. A few of the whales beat the fish with their flippers, and after a half-hour, they were still chasing the thing through the water, and I left.
Posted by adrianjo at May 27, 2006 04:41 AM