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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Tourists Learn Who Rules the Roost On This Lush Hawaiian Isle By ANN ZIMMERMAN Kauai, the oldest of the Hawaiian islands, is called the garden isle for its lush vegetation. Now people are calling it the chicken isle because it is overrun by roosters, hens and little chicks. Most of the birds are believed to be descendants of former fighting cocks unleashed during a devastating hurricane more than a decade ago. The birds now forage at outdoor food courts and ruin sugar cane and corn crops. They wake islanders -- and tourists -- with predawn crowing. Last fall, Bob Brenner, a retiree from Austin, Texas, spent a week's vacation visiting a son who lives on the island. He returned home in need of some peace and quiet. "Those darn roosters had me up before 5 every morning," he says. "If I had a gun, I would have shot a couple of them. They are all over the place. They walk right into the restaurants." Other Hawaiian islands have feral chickens, too, but Kauai's problem is worse because it is the only island in the chain that lacks mongooses, the natural enemy of wild chickens. Mongooses were imported to the Hawaiian islands in the late 1800s to kill rats in the sugar-cane fields. Local legend has it that a mongoose bit the hand of a Kauai dockworker, who knocked the entire crate of the critters into the bay, and no more were imported. That's good news for rare bird species if nobody else. Sue Kanoho, executive director of the Kauai Visitors Bureau, fields her share of angry calls from tourists annoyed by the incessant crowing. But eradication is stymied by island residents' love-hate relationship with the birds. Ms. Kanoho poses the dilemma: "What if you accidentally killed someone's pet that went out for a walk?" Some were poisoning the birds and shooting them until the Kauai Humane Society cried foul several years ago after getting calls about maimed animals. The society recently disbanded an effort to persuade residents to trap them so they could be euthanized. The program hadn't put much of a dent in the population. A lot of people have ruffled feathers. The birds roost and roam in Kauai's best neighborhoods and pit neighbor against neighbor. Resident Faye Reese raises chickens -- some of them former wild birds -- for their eggs. But her 61-year-old neighbor Neil Husband says the hens and the chicken feed attract the noisier, more aggressive roosters. "Those blasted birds won't let me sleep. They make a racket all day and night," he said. This week, Ms. Reese is nursing back to health two hens she found wounded -- one of which can't walk -- by someone apparently bent on killing them. She says she knows a fellow who used a high-powered pellet gun to kill the neighborhood's king rooster. The rooster's death just made the problem worse since several young birds were battling to succeed him at the top of the pecking order. The spontaneous cockfights caused quite a ruckus. A 550-square-mile rural island, Kauai has a human populace of 63,000. The population of wild chickens is harder to pin down. Thomas Kaiakapu, wildlife manager with state Division of Forestry and Wildlife, has never done a formal chicken census, but he figures there are thousands of them. Branden Shumate, a real-estate agent on the island's south shore, says he counted 100 in his neighborhood in one day. Kauai's wild-chicken population started to get out of hand in 1992, when Hurricane Iniki, the state's most devastating hurricane, hit the island, doing $1.8 billion in damage to the beaches, hotels and local property. At the time, there were five sugar plantations on the island. Workers, many from Portugal and the Philippines, lived on the plantations and raised animals for food. Domestic chickens were set loose during the storm. But there was also a large, underground cockfighting scene on the island, according to Becky Rhodes, director of the Kauai Humane Society. "The hurricane blew apart the containers where the cocks were raised, and they flourished" in the wild, says Dr. Rhodes. "They are nothing if not prolific." The wild hens are edible, but remain tough even after hours of cooking, locals attest. Still, as the economy in Kauai worsens -- tourism spending was down 15% last year -- more hens are winding up on the dinner table. That's no threat to the roosters, though. "Do you know how to cook a rooster?" asks Jeanne Jackson, who runs a jewelry booth near Poipu Beach, which has so many chickens the birds lay eggs inside store booths like Ms. Jackson's. "You put it in a pot with a lava stone. When the rock gets soft, you still have two more hours." The roosters have inspired numerous souvenirs -- pens with rooster heads, wooden rooster statues, and T-shirts proclaiming the rooster the "official bird of Kauai" or an "official unendangered species." "Everyone complains about the roosters, but then they buy everything rooster," says Temperance Raziel, who mans the gift shop at the Kauai airport. He likes the roosters because they eat another island pest -- centipedes. "There are a lot of things I would get rid of first, like mosquitoes," he said. Kauai has never attempted an official program to eradicate its wild chickens or to reduce their population. "It's been talked about, but it was never deemed a health threat to need such extreme measures," says Beth Tokioka, executive assistant to Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho. Mr. Shumate, the real-estate man, says it's about time the island did something. He recently started a business making rooster traps. He was inspired by frequent calls from new homeowners who wanted to know what to do about the roosters rousing them from their slumber. "Who knew it would be the best closing gift I ever gave a real-estate client," he says. Mr. Shumate began making the traps for neighbors and now advertises them on Craigslist for $159. His first customer: Costco Wholesale Club, which was trying to thin the flock of chickens at its outdoor food court. He'd like to see Kauai officials make rooster control a priority: "I see this as a real problem for tourism, prospective real-estate buyers and public health. If you can't sleep, that is a health issue."
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Funny read - thanks
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