Easy living

I'm having to re-jig my Aitutaki story to remove most of the cyclone references, since it's not going to be published for a while, by which time it will all be old news. That means there's now room for things like this fish-spotting dog at Muri Beach on Rarotonga.

There are lots of presumably stray dogs on Rarotonga (but no dogs at all on Aitutaki - some story about a chief's child being bitten, long ago) and they all seem quite healthy and well-fed - relaxed enough certainly to have the time and inclination to wander about in the shallows fish-watching. This one spent ages in the water, paddling from coral clump to coral clump apparently just looking at all the colourful fish flitting about - he didn't seem to be hunting. The last time I was there I saw another dog, a Rottweiler-cross, doing exactly the same thing.

People hunt, though. I watched a couple of young guys doing the world's easiest fishing - splashing about in warm, knee-deep water with a long net and scooping up bucketfuls of goat fish: small, pale and seasonal, with beards when fully grown (hence the name) but when juveniles with negligible bones, cleaned and then eaten whole and raw. So the cooks get to take things easy too. That's how they like to do (or not do) things in the islands.