#fanihi

[tinylongwing]

Quick little fanihi sketch, just because they're too dang cute. We see lots of these around Rota where they're thankfully still fairly abundant and serve well in their fruit-eating, seed-dispersing role on the island.

(Mariana Fruit Bat, Pteropus marianus)

[tinylongwing]

Back to the Marianas next week! Here are two field sketchbook pages I didn't manage to post yet, of fanihi (Mariana fruit bat) and sali (Micronesian Starling).

Fanihi were kind of everywhere on Rota, and I saw more of them in five days there than I have in all my time working on Saipan over the years. It's good to know that their population is healthy there, though the locals said that they were seeing them more than usual also because of a behavioral change. Typhoons in 2023 had stripped the trees of flowers and fruit and delayed the new fruiting season, so part of the reason fanihi were so visible was that they were spending a lot more time than before having to find food.

Pretty important when doing any kind of science to keep behavior and detectability in mind - seeing more bats doesn't always mean there are more bats, just that they may be more visible than normal for other reasons.

[cablelinesandsunsets]

Never seen a fanihi outside of a controlled setting!…they’re endangered!!! and this lil cutie graced me with their presence <3

I wonder if it’s the same bat that visited when Ozzy passed.

[coach-jellybean]

Guaiyan Maisa Håo

It’s not easy to love yourself.  Society trains us from when we’re little to not be satisfied with what has been passed down from our parents.  We grow up with all of these insecurities and then we go to school and point out what we view as flaws in others in order to help ourselves feel better about what we dislike about ourselves. We’re always too much of something. We’re fat, skinny, tall, short, messy hair, straight hair, curly hair, brown, white, yellow, funny looking toes, big noses, big eyes, small eyes, yellow teeth, crooked teeth, wrinkles, freckles, skin blemishes, moles, eye lashes too long, eye brows too think, belly too round, legs too big,  butt too flat—if we focused as much attention on our inner development, the world might be so beautiful, we wouldn’t even notice the too muches we have lingering all over our bodies. 

I didn’t realize that I looked different from anyone else until my older sister told me I was adopted because I was not the same color as she and Christine.  I think I was four or five.  I started to notice that my cousins would joke about me being vanilla and they were chocolate, my oma would say “OOOH!  My little German girl!”  At this point in my life, I took these differences with a shrug and carried on thinking about Barbie Dolls as I imagined being discovered by Walt Disney himself to become the singing voice of Ariel (I didn’t know that a singer doesn’t continue to record music after the movie was done). 

It wasn’t until elementary school that I was called “haole” and that references to my white skin were made to be something terrible.  Apparently white people are believed to have a large array of illnesses amongst the 5 year old population as of 1991.  So it started… the distaste for my light skin.  As time passed, my 7 year-old palate maintained a love for Ichiban, Chef Boyardee, fried chicken and dunkaroos.  Because I had no one to play outside with and I wasn’t much of a loner, TV became my best friend and the names referencing my color were grouped with names referencing my weight. Development was further against me as my baby teeth fell out revealing crooked teeth that seemed to jut out in all directions.  If my teeth were landscape, one would need an all-terrain vehicle and some repelling rope to get from Point A to Point B.   Pre-teen years changed my thick straight hair with curly ends into a mess of coconut husk-like poof balls.  By the time I hit high school, the sight of myself in the mirror was completely displeasing.  I thought I was fat and ugly and I pretty much felt convinced that everyone else thought so too.  The insults were frequent enough for me to believe it. 

Awkward years and a life story later, I’m able to wake up, look in the mirror and tell myself “Damn girl, you cute!”  Of course some rugby weight loss, braces and hair reform has helped me feel a little better about myself, but there’s still that challenge of overcoming the taught mentality of being completely displeased with one’s appearance.  So how’d I do it?                                           PRACTICE.  

Many times we look at ourselves in the mirror and go “Ew, you’re all of these too muches!”—and that’s how we start our days!!!  PRACTICE.  First, practice simply looking at yourself and accepting.   Just silence.  Leave all negative thought outside of yourself and just be free of it.  At first you’ll have to remind yourself not to do it, but over time you’ll just wake up one day and realize you thought no bad thoughts.  After you get to that point, start to compliment yourself.  Everyone has some quality that’s amazing—point it out to yourself.  In time, I started to love the bright brownness of my eyes, the contrast of my dark features against my light skin that I once loathed so much. I appreciate the curliness of my hair as it allows me to roll out of bed and be excused for messiness.  Seriously, curly hair is allowed to be a little messy.  My biggest challenge was my weight and I eventually overcame that also.  While I’m thick and rollie pollie, I had to learn to appreciate the curve of my hips, the size of my breasts, the thickness of my legs, the softness of my tummy.  My shape is the model for the body that no woman wishes for… but with practice I can now wake up in the morning and after getting dressed, check myself and go “Damn girl, you cute!” So just do it man.  Love yourself.   Hm.  In other news, I’m going fanihi counting tomorrow.  I hope I get paired with someone cool.  In a lot of my past, I get paired with some kind of special person, I've started to wonder if the higher being thought it funny to put me in these situations.   This one situation I'll never forget:  I was sitting in a waiting room for my massage appointment.  I had no idea who my therapist would be-- I never went to this spa before.  As the receptionist says "There's your therapist!"  I turn to see a beautiful man of pacific island decent, maybe he's 6'2, 280 lbs, long hair, obviously works out.  I whispered a quick prayer of thanks right before homeboy held the door open for this old Filipino man in a track suit, wearing a fanny pack, long hair, long nails, a mustache and beard that was very obviously inspired by fashion statements from the Huang Dynasty.  I pleaded to the heavens to be allowed spa QT with the fine therapist.  Alas, the universe was feeling funny that day and I got the Filipino Confucius.   That's not even all!  In high school I was a peer mediator in my senior year.  As a peer mediator, you just kind of go into classes and you're there to help a student with a learning disability or some other kind of something and in every single class, I was paired with a student that had the most wicked breath, or a spitter, or one that was touchy.  What is this?  Why?!  You cannot make these kinds of misfortunes up, people.  You absolutely cannot.   Any way, I'm going to imagine myself paired with a desirable human being.  Not necessarily one I want to make babies with in the jungle or anything...  just someone who's cool.   <3 Shan