Weapons of Mouse Destruction

Back when we lived in an apartment at the Yap Cooperative Association, we would sometimes flip a coin to see who had to take the trash out at night. The dumpster wasn’t very far away, and it’s not like it was ever cold outside, but the trip there at night could be squirm-inducing due to the likelihood of running into a Norway rat digging through one of the trash cans on the way.

Exotics are a major problem throughout the Pacific, where many of the endemic species evolved in isolation and without competition, and thus are easily overrun by highly adaptable species introduced from the mainland. Norway rats arrived as stowaways. They are, like many exotics, adaptable to various living environments. Here in Yap that adaptability has allowed them to develop a talent for leaping headlong out of a dark trash can as you approach, likely scaring the pants off of you and making you wish they had never been kicked out of Scandinavia in the first place.

We bring this up because, as it turns out, a Norway rat may have been built into one of the interior walls of our house. How, you may ask, could anything be dumb enough to be built into a wall? Perhaps Jimmy Hoffa could give us some answers. In any event, the rat has to go, and this week we spent some time shoving rat poison into every conceivable rat hole in the joint.


We also put up tiny "No Trespassing" signs all over the place, although we were unable to find any that were translated into Norwegian. We haven’t heard any noises in the past few days, so we’re hopeful that the rats have been scared off, either by threat of death or legal action.

On Sunday, we borrowed a kayak from a friend and headed out to see some of the mangrove swamps that line the fringes of the islands of Yap Proper. Getting to the mangroves was a tough slog – close to two miles of open-water paddling in each direction. We stayed well inside the reef, of course, but neither of us has very much, ok any, experience in a kayak. We had high hopes that we would fare better than during our most recent paddling experience, in the Royal Gorge last summer (yes, that’s our guide on the left, unexpectedly exiting the raft in the midst of a monster rapid:


Followed by the unsurprising result of said unexpected exit):


Dealing with the rolling waves, wind, and current made for a difficult paddle to the mangroves, but once we got there it was worth it. It’s a peaceful environment, with smooth water and interesting plant life.


Navigation can be a little tricky when you get back into some of the smaller channels, but it’s fun to poke around in places that are less-traveled.


As it turns out, that may be why we’re here in the first place

Stuff, Glorious Stuff

There was much excitement in the Grove household this week. Finally, we have stuff! Our shipping container’s long and arduous journey began in Denver on February 5, when KC and the movers from Rocky Mountain Overseas packed the things that we thought we’d need in Yap. Two months later the container magically arrived, and after clearing customs, the circus arrived in our front yard. In a wonderful show of efficiency, the shipping company utilized no fewer than 10 workmen driving 5 vehicles.

Once the movers had unloaded the crate, they looked ready to take off without helping us get in. We wouldn’t need help under normal circumstances, but seeing as how our only tools were inside the crate, we needed help opening it. After some cajoling, a couple of workmen grabbed some bolt cutters and prybars, and proceeded to hack away at the nails on the broad side of the crate. After a few minutes of this, one of them said: “Why did those [very nice and competent movers in Denver] put all of these [wonderful, and enjoyable to pull] nails into this [lovely] crate?” At this point, KC could no longer keep quiet (not an uncommon occurrence, Matt feels compelled to point out), and asked, very politely, whether it might be easier to pull the nails from the end marked as follows:

The workers had the crate open within a minute following this Eureka moment, and our two-month wait was over.

Meanwhile, our long wait at the post office was finally paying off. USPS delivered a shipping container full of mail on the same boat that carried our shipping crate.

As luck would have it, the care packages that we sent to ourselves – the goods that we thought we couldn’t go without and that we were assured would arrive within two weeks of mailing – were on the same boat as the shipping container. Irony, indeed. Here’s Matt excitedly searching the post office box:

And here is KC with the spoils of victory. Take that, USPS!! You have not killed us, but only made us stronger.

On Saturday, we took a break from unpacking and headed across town to the Yap island-wide table tennis (whatever you do, don’t call it “ping-pong”!) youth tournament. We were too old, and definitely too bad, to play, but we had fun watching the kids.

We didn’t stick around for the end of the tournament, because really, how much ping-pong can you watch?

The rest of the weekend was spent unpacking and preparing for the week. We’re still missing one box, which, sadly, has Matt’s snorkeling gear in it. If it got thrown overboard on the way to Yap, we hope that it makes its way to a Robinson Crusoe out there somewhere. The mask and fins will come in handy, as will the fully-charged, waterproof, satellite phone/GPS transponder.

Thanks for reading, and have a good week!

Happy Easter!

Just a brief posting this week as we celebrate the Easter holiday. KC had a short workweek due to Good Friday – the FSM national government was more generous than the Yap State government, however, and so Matt worked a full week.

On Easter Sunday, we decided to give church a try. We’d been a little apprehensive about this. There are certainly churches here, mostly Catholic, Mormon, and Seventh Day Adventist. None are Methodist. One that we had spotted in Colonia was the Yap Evangelical Church. The church is high up on the hill beside the Blue Lagoon (the source of this name is somewhat mysterious, since the body of water is neither blue nor a lagoon). It’s a picturesque open-air building, and was nicely dressed up for Easter.



We enjoyed the service, although it was mostly in Yapese. Luckily, the sermon was given by a visiting pastor in English, and was then translated into Yapese. This did have the unfortunate consequence of doubling the sermon’s length, but it was fun nonetheless.

Other highlights of the service included a performance by the children’s choir. We’re well on our way to concluding that kids’ feelings about singing in public are the same no matter where you go. About half of them – shuffling back and forth with their eyes down – clearly didn’t want to be there, a few were hamming it up, and the remainder were enjoying the music.

An Easter egg hunt followed the service. Matt had been looking forward to this all week, and felt well-prepared to knock down dozens of small children in order to acquire a mountain of candy and subsequent bellyache, but KC banned him from participating. Maybe next year, when the kids are a little bigger and can absorb the contact more easily.


Here’s the entrance to the church:



And the view from the front steps:














We hope everyone had a nice Easter (or Passover), and we’ll write more next week!

Movin' On Up

We moved into our house this week! We moved into our house this week! We moved into our house this week! As you can tell, we are thrilled to be the brand new tenants of Quarter No. 37 on Tauguw Heights. Our new digs are about half a mile from work, near the top of one of the many hills overlooking Colonia. Getting here was a bit of an ordeal, and one that isn’t quite finished yet, so let’s back up for a moment.


Three months ago, Quarter No. 37 was in rough shape. The walls were still standing, but the jungle was moving in quickly. The trees sprouting through the vent in the roof no doubt made it cool and shady inside, but we were looking for something a little bit more cosmopolitan. Fortunately, at the time of our arrival an apartment was available at the highly coveted Yap Cooperative Association. The YCA apartments are directly above the biggest store on island. During the week the bustle is surprising. It wasn’t a bad place to be for awhile, but after a month or so we were ready for a change. Luckily, the contractor finished work on Quarter No. 37 only 3 weeks behind schedule, and we got the keys near the end of last week.

And boy, did we get keys! There are eight doors in the house, all of which have keyed – and incompatible – locks. The result is a keychain that would make any janitor proud.



We’ve done what we can to minimize this collection. Our day-to-day keychain, while still large, at least no longer has its own gravitational field.

While you’re here, let’s take a quick tour of the house. Come on in and set a spell…



As you might expect the setup is quite different from back home. The main living area is an open L-shape, with more windows than wall space. The windows are louvered, and with very deep overhanging eaves, we’ve been able to leave them open in all but the fiercest rainstorms. We get pretty good breezes in our hilltop location, and between that and the highly reflective tin roof, it isn’t too unbearably hot most of the time. In any event, the master bedroom (there are 3 bedrooms in all) has a window air-conditioner that works quite well – KC thinks too well – to bring the temperature down at night.


The kitchen is in the center of the house, and is unfortunately still a work in progress. The housing office, despite three months notice, decided not to look for an oven and range until the day we were to move in. None were available on island, and so we’ve been making do with two camp-type butane stoves, both of which bear this helpful warning label:


Luckily, the kitchen is well-ventilated, and so we haven’t suffered any ill effects. The gas stoves are actually pretty nice. They’d be great for car camping, and we’re hoping to be able to hang on to them once the stove is installed. In the meantime, the equipment hasn’t hampered KC’s cooking talents too much. Her attempt to fry brownies wasn’t much of a success, but the fresh tuna, long beans, and mashed potatoes came out wonderfully.



Our first, and probably only, big home improvement project has been to paint the main room. It was blindingly white when we moved in, and so we went to the hardware store to try and find some paint that was on sale (retail price for paint here is nearly 40 bucks a gallon). Luckily, the store had a couple of returned gallons that weren’t too awful, and we picked those up and went to work. We still have some touching up to do, and the color scheme is probably not something we’d choose at home, but it works pretty well in the tropics. In any event, it’s nice not having to wear sunglasses indoors anymore.



So far, our only bad moments in the house have come courtesy of the resident population of tropical insects. We have theories about how the above-ground nuclear testing in the nearby Marshall Islands may have contributed to the rise of a race of super-bugs in this part of the world. The worst moment came the other morning, after a huge rainstorm had pounded the house for much of the night. KC woke up to a tickling sensation on her leg, and bounded out of the bed with a shriek of terror. The tickling sensation was a cockroach, big enough to have its own zipcode, that immediately jumped off of KC and onto our brown sheets. Matt, with no eyeglasses handy, had to resort to picking up a magazine and bashing anything that looked like it might be moving. After a few swats, the roach was history, as was the magazine, which the roach had bitten in half following a glancing blow. Ok, that last part isn’t really true, but it wouldn’t have shocked us all that much. We’d like to say that no bugs can shock us anymore, but that seems to be asking for trouble.




That’s all for this week. We’ll post again soon!