Alex on the Ellen DeGeneres Show 5/17/2013

[MickLifeCrisis]

So what kind of animals "come up to the house" do you suppose? They don't have deer, raccoons, possums and skunks in Hawaii, do they?

[librarian_7]

http://wildlifeofhawaii.com/

Here's a start. Apparently, there are a variety of animals.

[Lilly]

"Honey, there's a mongoose on the deck..."

[r1015bill]

I saw mongooses (mongeese?) several times from my car without even trying so they really must be everywhere.

Looking at that list that Lucky provided, you gotta wonder what people were thinking importing all those mammals.

[librarian_7]

I noticed on a link from that site, that there are only 2 native mammals...and they're endangered. One bat, one seal.

(Of course, we see an endangered SEAL every week on that show... )

[r1015bill]

[librarian_7]

[MickLifeCrisis]

Oh, so Oahu does have deer. And feral goats. And boars.

The mongoose is considered an invasive species in Hawaii. They were introduced in the 1830's to control the rat population that were damaging the sugar cane plantations. Except the rats are nocturnal and the mongoose is a daytime animal. So they didn't reduce the rat population but ate birds eggs instead and flourished because they don't have any natural predators. Someone must have thought it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[librarian_7]

From what I've seen, the whole notion of ecological balance just wasn't on anyone's radar until quite recently. There are certainly numerous examples of invasive species that have really screwed up a number of places. (Like, say, the classic case of rabbits in Australia.)

[Fleur de Lisa]

Only here would we go from discussing Alex's long awaited talk show appearance to the topic of mongooses....

[Lilly]

Mods? What mods?

[librarian_7]

Hey, it's totally on topic! We started with wondering what sort of wildlife Alex sees from his deck--which, hey, HE mentioned!--and went from there!

[MickLifeCrisis]

Hey, it's totally on topic! We started with wondering what sort of wildlife Alex sees from his deck--which, hey, HE mentioned!--and went from there!

Totally on topic.

[Fleur de Lisa]

Do you honestly think you're gonna hear "this is off-topic" from me????!!!

But take a bow, ladies, bc while still "on-topic", I don't think we've ever stretched farther than Ellen-interviewing-Alex to Wikipedia-native-Hawaiian-wildlife/mongoose!!!!

[allegrita]

I totally LOVE you people.

And I miss you. But thank you for giving me lots of giggles and good vibes when I have time to pop in. This has been a very cool thread to peruse.

So... just to throw us farther off topic.... is it mongooses, or mongeese?

(BTW... Baby Lion is definitely his daddy's son, isn't he? Beautiful!! )