Hunting crabs

With the sea on one side of our camp and areas of saltwater swamp on most other sides we would regularly get inundated by crabs. Active at night they would scuttle over our sand paths, sometimes finding their way into our sleeping bure to wake us up and chew big holes through all of our clothes

Unfortunately, for them, they were also often on the menu for our local Fijians (boiled up and served in a delicious sauce made from coconut and onion), and sometimes big bags of them would be taken over to the mainland to be sold

About halfway through our time on the island some of the locals came and spent a few days with us at Nawaisevu. One night, after playing numerous rounds of "El Presidente" (a card game) with them, they invited me to go off into the darkness. Not really sure what was going on I grabbed a torch, and we all disappeared off down the beach towards the mangrove swamp

The tide was out, so the it was mostly sandy, with the occasional pool and the twisted roots and trunks of the trees reaching out from the darkness. Between the tidal part of this swamp and the land was a thin strip where no trees grew, and we walked through this (elsewhere it was almost impossible to make your way through the tangled mass of mangrove trees)

Hiding behind roots and in the pools of water the locals spied crabs, and carefully plucked them off the ground and into a large sack. Walking barefoot it was a little disconcerting as they scuttled past in a bid for safety, but the Fijians were very adept at either picking them up by the rear of their body, where they cannot use their pinchers on you, or by a leg, risking the occasional squashed finger

Having filled a sack with crabs we headed back past camp to the mangroves on the other side, and on the way I got a few of the other volunteers to tag along. More of the same ensued, with us foreigners even successfully bagging a few ourselves

Crabs and other shellfish have to be eaten fresh, so, perhaps rather cruelly, instead of killing them there and then, the bags were left tied up by our kitchen until the following afternoon, the occasional claw sticking snapping at anyone who got too close

Hermit crab racing

Hermit crabs were some of the most fascinating creatures we had on Yadua. Not because of any complex social behaviours, but probably more because they were one of the few animals we could really watch close up

Unlike most crabs they don't have their own shell, and so they will find and acquire one from a dead animal, or even anything remotely shell-like, instead. As a hermit crab grows bigger it therefore also has to find new, larger shells to house itself. All this can lead to a rather comical arrangement of shapes and sizes: some with pretty boring round shells; others that have an array of fantastic spikes on them; the smallest little crabs struggling to get around in oversized shells; and the giant crabs badly in need of a new home

From our point of view there were two different sorts of hermit crabs, those that lived on land, and those in the sea, especially on the reefs and in the shallows

We rarely got to pay too much attention to the marine version unless in the unlikely event of there not being much else on the reef to capture our attention, though sometimes you could sit by the shallows and watch a couple wrestling over a new shell they had found. I particularly remember a big and a little crab having a disagreement over an empty cone shell (cone shells are a particularly venomous mollusc, and so this would have been a useful shell to own). Both obviously wanted it, but the little one couldn't get near for fear of the bigger crab, which in turn was never going to fit into this little shell, though it kept trying

The land hermit crabs were much more a feature of our camp, though, and if you looked hard enough there would always be a few around. Any sudden movement close by and the crab would instantaneously suck itself back inside its shell, bulky claws and all. However, if you were patient you could pick one up and watch as it slowly decided the outside world might be safe again and emerged limb by limb

One of our pastimes in camp, which I hope isn't seen as being at all cruel, was to race hermit crabs. Pretty simply this involved putting a handful of crabs in the middle of a circle, choosing your "horse" and then waiting for the first to cross the outer line of the circle. Bit by bit each crab would emerge from its shell and slowly wander off, though without warning any of them might decide it was safer inside, leaving your apparently winning steed sitting curled up right before the finish line

Katie, Gordon and his father and brother (who came to visit) even developed an improved version of this, with the crabs instead inside a piece of bamboo, meaning that with nowhere else to go they would actually move in a roughly straight line (or do a U-turn and head back the way they started)

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any good pictures of hermit crabs from the island, but I'm sure if you want to see what they look like you could easily find pictures somewhere on the internet

Cats

I know I'm not particularly good at keeping this blog up to date, but I'm going to try a bit harder over the next few weeks (as I can't go out and enjoy myself because I'm on crutches!)

I don't know the latest news from Fiji, beyond increasing concerns of human rights violations by the military. I will endeavour to find out what I can and state that here, but I am a little cautious about endangering friends over there.

In the meantime, on a brighter note, I thought I'd recount some more memories of Yadua:

At our camp in Nawaisevu Bay we had a couple of cats, Robbie and Chivers, whose intended purpose was to keep away rats. In actual fact that didn't seem particularly effective at this, since a lot of our food, particularly anything chocolate, seemed to get regularly ravished

The two, peculiarly named after makes of jam (Robertsons and Chivers), were definite characters though. They were sisters, and so bore quite a close resemblance, though had very different characters. Robbie was probably the braver of the two, and certainly the most human-friendly, whilst Chivers was much more reserved.

Whenever tuna cans were opened both quickly appeared on the scene, but other than that their hunting prowess didn't exactly impress. One morning I managed to spear a small fish (a banded grunter) from the waters edge, and threw it to Chivers, waiting patiently by the shore. She looked down at it, then up at me and meowed expectantly. I waited for her to eat it, but instead she cautiously extended a paw, then jumped back as the still living fish wriggled and eventually flopped its way back into the surf and swam away

The one thing I found most interesting about the two cats was how much they loved coconut. I never even thought cats would eat coconut, but as soon as we opened one they would appear and gobble up any small piece they were offered. Below is a picture I took just before leaving of the two of them and some coconut (apologies for the bad colours, I dropped my camera in the sea just afterwards!)



Unfortunately, there were feral cats on the island too, and at the time we were there no one had seen fit to spay our cats (perhaps understandably because the closest vet was maybe a 24 hour journey away). This meant that they both became pregnant during our time there, and that created quite a lot of disagreement in camp. Some people looked forward to having kittens around, whilst others (including me) were worried about the impact on the local wildlife of more feral cats

Cats are generally pretty good at eating anything, and not being indigenous on these islands they are a serious threat to local wildlife. Though there were objections it was decided we would have to kill the kittens

Except Greg, none of us had done anything like that before, though Rosie reluctantly volunteered herself. However, in the end Rosie was visiting another island when Robbie gave birth, and after a couple of days Mike and I took action ourselves. It was not particularly pleasant, and caused a temporary rift in our group

In the end Chivers' kittens were left alive, though I don't know what happened to them after we left