Monday, March 9, 2009

Do It U.S.S.R.

I have come to realize out on this crazy island a few important things. Firstly, never assume that a flying bird will avoid flying into you. Secondly, eating Pong's wasabi is like snorting a bucket-full rock salt smothered in habanero peppers......if you havent tried this, it burns! Thirdly, and more dastardly, I must report that The Russians are coming.

Have you ever seen the movie Red Dawn? Well, you really should, because its going to become reality soon....Charlie Sheen and all. The Cold War was a really big deal. Most of my colleagues and associates are too young to remember it, but people took it very seriously. Or maybe they treated it like this decade's War On Terror.....it was a really big deal for about a year, then everyone got fed up with it because it just amounted to the government violating our civil liberties and locking up a bunch of people who had done nothing wrong. McCarthy and Bush had a lot in common in some respects.

But this time....the threat is Real. Midway has always been on the front line of The Cold War.....then.....and now. It was a top secret listening post for Russian submarines, and was part of the DEW (Distant Early Warning Line) that was set up to detect incoming Soviet bombers, bent on starting the vicious cycle of Mutually Assured Destruction. Now, it is a sniffing post for nuclear activity half a world away, and will soon be retrofitted to detect nuclear detonations seismically as well. What is going on here is obvious. The Russians are still coming, and there is little we can do to stop it. They have been patiently and deviously plotting their attack on Midway since the cold war!!!!!!

This is the only rationale for some of the things going on here lately.....we had a safety meeting today that made recommendations that were oddly akin to those that would be made if a nuclear holocaust were to take place.......talk of sirens, emergency shelters, evacuation plans, food and water.......will they have no mercy on us?! They even assassinated one of our ducks!!! Midway residents now walk the streets in fear, suspecting even their best friends of being a Communist Agent. Doug, who we trusted to be a soft-spoken U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee, revealed his true identity as a Communist Agent and made off with the above-mentioned duck on the flight off the island tonight. The betrayal was overwhelming.



We went out on one of the boats this afternoon....this is along the northern rim of the atoll, with waves breaking over the edge of the reef.

Red Menace aside, today was pretty mild out here. More and more tropicbirds are sitting on eggs now, and the albatross chicks are growing quickly. We pulled some verbesina (the most prevalent and damaging weed out here) and checked on the reef....the numbers of seabirds wizzing by in the big surf outside the reef made me drool.....anything could be out there! Besides all the submarines, of course......

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