My recent adventures have been about the vacation that my family and I took to the island of Guam immediately after I had relinquished my position as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company. After I had passed the guidon to the new company commander in a change of command ceremony, I decided to cool my jets for a few days and catch up on some much needed rest and relaxation. My family also needed a break. As luck would have it, my First Sergeant at 305th Supply and Services Company was also planning to cool his jets and catch up on some rest and relaxation. So, we set off on a vacation to the sunny island of Guam. Just to clarify things, when I say we, I mean that my family and I and my First Sergeant all set off on this vacation adventure. We decided to use the low-budget method of transportation to get to Guam, which meant that we were all going to catch a Space-A (space available) hop aboard an Air Force cargo plane out of Osan Air Force Base to fly to Guam. We experienced a flight from hell and spent an eternity of time at Yokota Air Force Base in the duty free store looking at china. No. Not China, the country but china, the Japanese dishes. We also endured a long wait at Anderson Air Force Base, waiting to check in at the officer guest quarters. Once I had accomplished those things, I needed to secure some transportation to get around the island. I might have mentioned that the car I was able to rent, for a mere fee of ninety-four dollars ($94), for the entire duration of our vacation. On the morning of the second day that we were on the island, we visited one of the local beaches. You may remember our encounter with wild pigs that came out of nowhere and thought we were food. And perhaps, you even remember the giant coconut crabs that scared the shit out of us but didn’t really bother us. I later learned that those giant coconut crabs didn’t really bother us because we weren’t really part of their diet and we didn’t have anything shiny to steal like baubles, trinkets, and jewelry. We had secured all of that stuff in our rental car before we went down to the beach. Little did we know that those conniving coconut crabs were actually thieves. But enough of the history lesson. What I want to talk about is another peculiarity that we discovered while out scrounging for food. When I say out scrounging for food, what I really mean is that we were really out looking for fruit to pick. And finding fruit to pick wasn’t really all that hard to do. There was fruit everywhere. I may have mentioned the coconuts and my exasperation trying to crack the husks on those damn coconuts. I just could not bust a coconut open to save my ass. No way, no how. Of course, I didn’t have a pet coconut crab, and I didn’t yet know the trick to cracking open a coconut. Oh yes, there is a trick to cracking open a coconut. But that is for another story. Anyway, the first couple of times that we went out scrounging for fruit, my wife and daughter got the shit scared out of them by these strange creatures hanging upside down in the fruit trees. Now imagine that you are young, a young child, and you fall through a hole in the ground that turns out to be a shaft for a cave. And in that cave, unbeknownst to you, there are hundreds and hundreds of bats hanging out sleeping (sort of) until dusk or sundown. Cuz that’s when the little bastards seem to come to life. Except, the young child has disturbed the resting bats and startled them out of their state of sleep. Suddenly, they take flight. In the process, they scare the living shit out of that little kid. Well, something very similar to that happened to my wife and daughter. You see, those strange creatures that were hanging upside down in the fruit trees were actually fruit bats. One species of the fruit bat was actually known as the flying fox. No. It didn’t look anything like a fox. It looked like a bat. Well, when we went to pick fruit, we startled the fruit bats. Oops. Excuse me. When you disturb someone or something out of its sleep, what do you think happens? Exactly. It jumps into defensive, evasive action. In the case of those fruit bats, they took wing and scared the living shit out of my wife and daughter. When I heard them screaming, I went running to see what the problem was. They were just pointing and screaming at these winged creatures, and at some other ones still hanging in the trees. I saw what the problem was. They were bats. Okay. I had to find a few fruit trees with no bats in them. It took me a few minutes. But I found some. And we were able to pick all of the fruit that we wanted. Later, when I was visiting my First Sergeant and his relatives, one of his cousins took a fruit bat off of a tree and held it by its wings to show it to us. He told us not to try that because they would bite if they got angry, and he talked to us about the flying fox and why it was hunted in Guam. The flying fox, specifically, was hunted as a source for local food and for export. But it was also prey for the Brown tree snake. As a general population, fruit bats were hunted for food, for their supposed medicinal properties, for sport, and by farmers to protect their fruit crops. I guess it’s a good thing that the local farmers didn’t hunt human fruit thieves. Otherwise, we might have been goners for sure. I guess the big difference between us and the bats was that we weren’t actually hanging out in the fruit trees like flies on shit and eating all of the fruit. Anyway, after our initial encounter with the flying foxes, we were able to pick fruit without any more significant exercises in futility.
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