Last Thanksgiving, after all the turkey had been demolished, football games wrapped, and family members waddled home, someone ventured to a remote beach on Kaua‘i, picked up a large rock, raised it high, and smashed it into the skull of a sleeping Hawaiian monk seal. Or maybe they used a bat. Or tire iron. In the…
Author: Kim Steutermann Rogers
Kim Steutermann Rogers lives with her husband and dog on the island of Kauai. She's a longtime freelance science journalist and author covering Hawaii's natural history and, periodically, Mark Twain. In between assignments, she writes fiction and nonfiction. She maintains a website at http://www.kimsrogers.com. You can find her on social media @kimsrogers.
Do Animals Have Personality?
My thick, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged, defines “personality” as “the quality or state of being a person and not an abstraction, thing, or lower being: the fact of being a individual person: personal existence or entity: capacity for the choices, experiences, and liabilities of an individual person.” There are six varying definitions of…
Two Ways To Fledge
Today, we said goodbye to the Laysan albatross chick featured on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology webcam for the past five months as she took to the air for the very first time. Just after sunrise, Niaulani hopped atop a rock wall, flapped her wings really hard, and stepped off a cliff, taking a leap…
For Laysan Albatross Chick, Independence Day Awaits.
When no witty sentence or meaningful anecdote lies ready at my fingers to write about, I generally turn to one of two things: Setting. Or weather. Today, it’s the weather. It’s hot. For Hawai‘i. Highs in the 90s are expected. Now, I know elsewhere in the world that might be considered a break in the…
In Mark Twain and Life: It’s Who Your Friends Know.
Preparing a Thanksgiving meal on Kaua‘i goes something like this: You spend days selecting the dishes you will make. You compile a long list of necessary ingredients. You hit your favorite grocer and find only half the items on your list. So, you stop at a second and third store and tick off a few…
The Many Faces of Laysan Albatross Chicks
You’ve got your Elvis with the long sideburns. You’ve got your classic Bozo. Sometimes, there’s a Mohawk in the crowd. Even a Jarhead. But the goal is a chrome dome, a Telly Savalas. As the longest stretch of time—four months—a Laysan albatross spends on land comes to a close, our chicks are near fledging. Their…
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