No wonder he wanted to sit down!

So today, in addition to wonderful snorkeling, I was able to attend the Kauai Fair with my sweetheart and good friend. Turns out there were also animals, including a big cow...who looked somewhat tired, but was probably just enervated from the heat:

He was so big, I couldn't even crop the photo! (Maybe it's a she...now that I think about it.) Anyway, there were all the normal fair animals:

Bunny. 

Little lamb who made thee? I tell you, if this animal looked at me like that, I could never use it for dinner...

I'm thinking it's a goat. But remember, not a farm girl!

 Piggie. Snoozing. Looks kinda like it's in jail.

I gotta say, I wasn't raised on a farm, and it would be REALLY hard to eat any of these animals, had I been living with them. Yeah, I'm a softie. There was a petting area too, but they charged you 2 extra dollars! So we just looked. And as I'm typing that, I'm thinking: If I'm allergic to dogs and cats, wonder how I'd do in a petting zoo??!!

 I had to crop out the little girl's face, but I felt kinda sorry for the duck! She was grabbing it kinda hard, but it wasn't squawking, so I guess it was all good. Little girl looked like she really wanted to take it home...

There wasn't a wagging pig tail in the whole place, but this little snoozer was sure cute. I wonder if it is an Old Spot?

Many folks are not familiar with the Rabids cartoon, but here is the stuffed animal.  If you haven't seen the cartoon, go on youtube and look it up. I think it's French, but there's no dialog, so that won't matter.  It's so odd that it's funny...

The Ferris Wheel on which we didn't go...long story.

 This one I call Cilantro and Corn Dog.....we HAD to have a corn dog. After all, it was a fair.  And my sweetheart was not only wearing his ZOMBIES LOVE BRAINS...EVEN SMALL ONES LIKE YOURS (ha) t-shirt, but he was helping hold my new Cilantro plants. Only 50 cents each. What a deal! Corn Dogs were good too.  Good thing we don't go to fairs very often. And good thing he was wearing his HERE I AM purple shirt. He wears it so I can find him in a crowd. Thanks, Alex!

 Lovely orchids.  Very tempting (and pretty expensive.)

An orchid face...

We had fun.  Perhaps I'll do another post with the watery adventures.  So I'll finish with one from my friend's yard:

Gosh, is that too pretty or what? Click on the photo: it has really amazing structures and colors....Can you imagine trying to create all this diversity? I mean, just all the different flowers blows my mind!

Two drupes walk into a bar....

OK, there is no bar, but i love those jokes where people walk into a bar and things go all astray. Sometimes I think I'm funny....you may not agree.  But these 2 Drupe shells caught my eye.  I thought the rainbow of light was fun too...

Three octopuses today.  Wow.  I am still excited by that.  They were all young, i.e., small, so I'm wondering where the big guys are. But honestly, I like the little ones more.

There were two seals snoozing on the beach.  One was way up in the plants...my friend tells me that during moulting, they keep up and away from others.  

She also heard that this one, sleeping near the plants, doesn't like the other one. Guess humans aren't the only ones who can't get along.

I'm glad they were not bringing out the fisticuffs.  Snoozing is always better than fighting.  I also heard that a lady took it upon herself to try to touch a seal not long ago.  Big Mistake. It reared up and almost bit her....stay away from wild animals!







A trunk fish swam past me:

And there was a Spanish Dancer inching along on top of a rock:

It's a nudibranch, which means naked lung.  In this shot, on the left, you can see the "lungs" which are fronds on top of the animal.  The head is on the right.  I think they're very pretty. Since there's a bright red color, that could mean they have poison, but I didn't investigate yet.  I've been busy! This is the last week before I start my new job, so I'm working to mash everything in while I have the free time.
Octopus 1:

All the octopuses stayed pretty calm as I photographed them.  I think only one changed to the dark maroon color.
Octopus #2:

Even got a little bit of rainbow in this one.  This is the octopus that, once I backed off a little, starting moving rocks around.  And who better?  With all those legs, they can make short work of any building enterprise.









Octopus #3:

While not a great photo, I included it because you can compare the size of the fish with the octopus.. the octopus is the brown blob just behind and under the fish's tail...

You can see more of the octopus in this photo.  The siphon is on the left.  It had made itself warty instead of smooth.











And there were two flounders, swimming more or less together:

Of course, they were close, but not close enough to be in the same photo. Drat.
And I'm calling this one "The Only Way to eat Tako"

Yes, we had salmon, asparagus, Spanakopita, all on my octopus plate!

This little humu was about 2 inches long.  It had a companion, perhaps a brother or sister?

Not quite an Eagle Eye Challenge..but close. This eel I might call a challenge:

The eel is mostly white-ish and is curled around a rock.  This will help you:

Well, maybe not! This is the face..

And as is only appropriate at this time of year, the Christmas wrasse:

Love it when the light makes bars on the animals..nice contrast. 

And speaking of the light:

You can see rainbow colors on the urchin's spines, too.

And I'll leave you with another Monk Seal photo:

They sleep so soundly, you can't tell if they are alive.  Until they raise their heads...or scratch.

I guess I really wanted to go!

Because I have a haircut at 9 tomorrow, there was no chance to swim beforehand.  Church on Sunday, so ditto.  I like to swim early before everyone and their mother gets in the water.  Thinking that's a selfish attitude, but my neck gets cricked when I have to look down, then up, then above the waves to check for others.  Not a great reason, but here's another: the octopus can be skittish; I have begun to learn to swim like a Ninja: no one sees me move on my appointed rounds! So when the impediments to swimming started to arise, I went above and beyond to be a dutiful swimmer.  Yeah, I'm all about sacrificing for others.  LOL

And the good news is that it worked: I discovered 3 octopuses today! YAY!  
Here is #1:

You can see how well they do with camouflage. There's a rock, a rock and an octopus. They do wait, tucked away, until they need to do something. I haven't seen any that hunt during the day here, but I know of a few who did on Oahu, so perhaps someday they will branch out.  If I were an octopus, I'd hunt at night too, as there are too many people who might interrupt me during the day at such a visitor destination.

Here is #2:

 You can see its eye at the bottom of the photo.  They stayed all tucked in today.  There was a bit of color movement (from brown/white to that dark brown color you see above..) But not much actual body movement.  I twinkled my fingers at them all, but there wasn't an answering response...ha.  I do not want to train them to respond to divers...that could be deadly for the octopus.  They are allowed to be hunted in this part of the ocean, as it's not protected as Hanauma Bay is on Oahu.  Too bad! So, don't tell anyone where these were, please!

Here is #3:

 If you click on the photos, you can see the eye.  For #3, on the right side.  That's part of the challenge of finding octopuses: you can see brown in a hole, and it might be a sea cucumber.   








And speaking of a challenge, here's Eagle Eye Challenge for today:

 See it?  When I tell you it's a Devil Scorpion Fish, does that help?

This little guy was probably only 6 inches long, all told.  I only saw it (and thank God!) because it moved.  The water was so shallow that I worried I would have to bump into it.  Thankfully, I didn't.  But I did have this picture in my mind that there could be a Scorpion Fish hanging off of my trash bags.  I keep two dive bags on my waist while swimming: one for the backup camera and one for trash. (You'd be amazed what I pick up: broken glass, rubber parts of dive shoe, paper towels.  I've even found dental bridges!  Yeah, how hard would it be to know that you lost one of those?!  And glasses.  I once saw a man standing on the bottom in Hanauma Bay: when I asked, he said "I've lost my glasses!!!"  I completely understood: how do you look for something when it's your glasses that you've lost?  I did find them for him. Oh and then there was the time I found someone's I-phone...and it was ringing.  Can you believe?  I wasn't about to have my dive ruined by having to go in to the beach, so I kept it in my trash bag...and it kept ringing.  HAHA. Found out later it was the owner calling the phone...But I digress.....)

I should have told you that it was raining lightly when I arrived a bit later at the beach today (7:30 a.m.).  This because I left home later, but also there had been an auto accident.  So we were diverted along the bypass road, which Thank God, there is one!  Since we are kind of a one-road-island, when one road is blocked, it can be really disconcerting.  Not to mention tempting to use bad words.  All that to say, here's what I saw out at sea when I arrived:

Rain. Pretty, isn't it?  Even prettier was the rainbow later...

 See it just under the clouds? Faint, but there.  There were lots of surfers out when I got in, but I was the only one snorkeling: score!!!!  Didn't last long, but I did feel great to be slipping around unaccompanied.  And yes, it is stupid to do this: what if something happened?  But in my defense, there were people on the beach.  They might have responded to a shout.  Here's hoping I never need to find out.

I alluded yesterday to the Yellow Tail Coris.  The juvenile and the adult are so different, it amazes me that they could be related.  See what you think:

Now, here's the adult:

I agree, you might need to click on it.  But it looks almost like a totally different fish! Incroyable!


Our power just went out and was then restored.  Just in case, I'll sign off now...perhaps I'll finish today's dive report over the next few days, since I probably won't be able to swim...
Aloha!