This is sort of three updates in one since we've been busy lately and haven't been updating the webpages as things happen. But, better late than never, I guess.
It's pretty tough to build a nest when you don't have any hands. Bunnies, however, manage pretty well by gathering grasses with their mouth and putting the grasses into the nest burrow. The bunnies here don't have to dig a burrow since they have the dropped nesting area already in place but they still have to put the grass inside. I'm not sure if wild bunnies have to pick the grass or if they find dried grasses, but here we give them a pile of grass to move around.
Cheiri normally doesn't mind folks with cameras taking her pictures. Today she was almost frantic while putting the grasses into her net box and was not happy about the camera. It was pretty hard to get any good 'moustache' pictures since she was hopping from one side of her space to the other and dragging the grasses around. I didn't want to annoy her for very long, so no good mustache pictures.
Cheiri was hauling grasses all over the place and then it would drag and she'd step on it and then have to gather it all back up again. This went on for awhile. Then after she'd put all the grasses into her nest, I gave her some more and then she decided that was enough grasses in the nest and started snacking on it instead. Well, we will see in the next couple of days if all the nest building is for a litter or just decorating for the holidays.
Other than Cheiri's grass moustache, we had one of our young bucks fly off to Maui. Seems the sort of thing a young buck would do, don't you think? If you see a Maui bunny on a windsurfer, it may be Zookie Schwartz!
When bunnies fly, they get to get weighed before they go. It hardly moves the needle on the scale, though. That seems like a pretty big scale for one little bunny but Zookie Schwartz figures he's an important bunny if he gets such a huge scale. It was also Halloween almost evening, perhaps he was hoping to go trick-or-treating, since he was dressed up as 'cargo'?
Zookie all comfy in his travelling box with his airline snack, although the airline folks think that's some sort of box cushioning instead of bunny snacks, I think. Zookie has gone off to Maui to help some folks make yarn and knit.
Some of the other goings on around here have been helping out at the local Hongwanji's annual 'Oh Wow! Laulau!' event.
Things can get a little crazy when the guys get together for a wee bit of a cookout. Do you notice that those are really large washtubs full of laulau and they were big enough that they needed a trailer to move them on?
Hawaiian Laulau are these tasty taro leaf wrapped bits of pork and fish. They're usually steamed in an 'imu' or underground oven, but they can also be steamed over a campfire if you have special steamers. The laulau are being made as a fund raiser for the local Hongwanji, or Buddhist temple for folks who don't happen to have their own local hongwanji and may not be familiar with the term. If you don't have a local hongwanji, you may not be familiar with the term 'laulau', either, although that's Hawaiian and not Buddhist. Well, unless you're Hawaiian Buddhist, then it can be both, perhaps?
Anyway, they started out with about 800 pounds of pork, not sure how many hundreds of pounds of butterfish (which may actually be some sort of rock cod or some such fish), about 6,000 taro leaves, and at least that many ti leaves, if not more and a lot of white cotton string. Cut the pork and fish into chunks, add some seasoning. To make each laulau, get a handful of pork chunks, add in a chunk of fish, wrap it in taro leaves, then ti leaves, then tie it with string. Repeat THREE THOUSAND TIMES.
You know, we don't even have that many people in this town and there were 3,000+ laulau made and steamed. Even though there were more laulau than people, all the laulau were sold out between 9 am to noon last Sunday. Even after all the laulau were gone, there were still hopeful stragglers wandering past.
After all the bundles of laulau are made up, they're then steamed in a big outdoor steamer. This is the small steamer. There were two of them necessary for the amount of laulau that were made.
Of course, when doing this sort of thing, it will rain so the steamers were set up under a tarp. They were cooking all night long so the laulau would be ready for everyone the next morning. The steamer in the picture above is to the right. So it's a big and BIGGER steamer. With a bonfire under each steamer all night long.
Once they were cooked, there were three laulau put into each package and there was an 'Oh Wow! Laulau!' drive through for the whole morning. A line of cars was going slowly along as the folks unpacked the steamer, other folks put three laulau in each package and other folks exchanged laulau packets for the laulau tickets that had been selling throughout town for the previous several weeks. Some cars exchanged one ticket for one packet, other cars would have multiple tickets - as many as a dozen or more, so the folks passing out the laulau were kept hopping.
I would think someone selling sides of steamed rice could have made a killing. Especially if the steamed rice came on a plate with enough room for a laulau alongside. There was lomilomi salmon available as well. Some of the cars hadn't gotten their tickets beforehand and had to hope that there would be some unticketed laulau available. I think they'd made three or four hundred extra for the folks who didn't have tickets but the extras didn't last long.
One laulau with rice and a side salad is a good lunch or dinner. There's still one left in my refrigerator, so hopefully tomorrow I'll take a picture and add in a laulau picture here instead of just pictures of the wrapped laulau. Just think of tasty steamed pork with a bit of smoke flavor, savory taro leaves wrapped around it, nice and hot over steamed rice. The outside ti leaves wrapped around it are taken off before eating. I'm not sure if all the flavoring is from the taro leaves or if the ti leaves add anything to the flavor or not? They're really tasty, though, and freeze well so we now have some 'Hawaiian style TV dinners' stashed in the freezer.