Thursday, September 30, 2010

The Buzzing of Flies...

You ever hear the buzz of flies over the corpse of a large-ish animal?  I have, and those stories (gruesome, but somehow sickly fascinating) will be forthcoming - but this is a story of how we first met our neighbor....who came calling one day sure he would find the corpse of a tourist and fully expecting the buzzing of flies. 

About a year after we built our cabin, we brought our dog and two toddlers over to camp at our cabin.  (This is when we figured out that the sills of windows are supposed to be INSIDE the building)....we were relieved that the only signs that anyone had been at our cabin were a trail through the thigh high grass from the nearest neighbor to our deck.

Pretty much everyday, we would get up leisurely and leave for the day  - the cabin had no water or electric and the Big Island has a lot of things to do/see.  We would come home early because no water meant heating water to bathe the kids and we wanted to get settled before it got dark. 

Apparently, to the responsible commuters, it must have looked like our rental car wasn't moving.  One morning, as we were getting ready for my husband's job interview with the electric utility on the Big Island, we heard a voice from the forest, "Hello? Is someone there?"

It was a police officer in uniform.  He was shocked to see the cabin - he lived down the road and didn't know we'd built in (guess we hid it well enough after all).  We introduced ourselves - established that I'd taught with his sister on Oahu, that his wife was a cousin of another friend (pure Hawaii, let me tell you), but it wasn't enough to explain how happy he seemed to meet us.

Finally, he 'fessed up, "People kept calling me, telling me about an abandoned rental car.  I fully expected the buzzing of flies and some dead tourist - great to see a little family, all alive, instead."

Turns out the police officer lived down the road a bit; he and his wife became our best friends and supports as we moved through our journey from cabin to house. 

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