Almost Paradise Pt 54 Attack of the Coconut Crab

(15 March 88) I’m on the graveyard shift. I tried it at Kwaj and, on balance, I like it. Changing sleep habits was a bit rough but I was getting too much sun and the night fascinates me. I’m free to do just about anything I want because there are maybe a dozen people up and nothing goes on. Besides, the wheels are always turning when there’s no one around. Click on images to make larger.

The police station is in the terminal building at the airfield. The night crew normally consists of a desk sergeant, a dispatcher and four officers. One stationary post is in the TRADEX radar site and the other in the ALTAIR site. One road patrol covers Roi and the other Namur.

I had road patrol on Roi last night and drove the police van because one of the pickups was being repaired. The Chevy van is a rusting hulk and passengers are advised to wear their raincoats while riding in inclement weather. All electrical devices on the van are subject to failure. Or you could turn on the defroster and the wipers would start running. The mechanics use screws, tape and glue to hold the parts together. When it rains the roof leaks so the raincoat and hood are part of the accessories.

I heard about this van nearly a year ago. The reason for its decrepit condition could be the title of a movie, “Revenge of the Coconut Crab.”

One night, a sergeant, who shall remain nameless, was the supervisor in charge of night patrol on Roi. He was tooling around airport road, enjoying the night air when he saw a large coconut crab in the middle of the street.

He stopped his van a few feet from the critter, approached it slowly on foot, then made a quick move, grabbed its claws and pinned them to its body with some heavy duty tape. He placed the crab on the floor of the van behind his seat. The sergeant resumed his patrol, possibly thinking about the crab feast he would experience the next day.

Meanwhile, down on the floor, the mighty crab grappled with its bindings until one claw, then the other were freed. It moved forward slowly to the back of the driver’s seat and climbed up toward the human sitting there.

When the driver reached the end of the runway, the crab made its move, grabbing the officer’s shoulder in a powerful and extremely painful grip. The sergeant tried to break free but the crab would have none of that.

Preoccupied with fighting off his attacker, the van was allowed to careen from side to side and where the road makes a sharp left, the van didn’t. Instead, it made a very nice belly flop into the Pacific waters below. Luckily, the coral reef is only a few feet below the surface of the water at that point.

The van and the sergeant were rescued while the crab made good his bid for freedom and swam  to his burrow somewhere along the shore, evidently dragging behind a chunk of heavy-duty tape. This would be the crab’s mission for that night, removing it. Maybe tomorrow he could continue the search for a coconut. The sergeant was fired a couple of days later and the van, as I described it, is still working, sort of.

I saw my first crab on Roi about midnight, on the narrow driveway between the ordnance security fence and the drop-off to the water below. This crab was purple in color and only about the size of the coconut it stood on. I stopped the van about ten yards away, left my lights on and slowly walked to a spot in front of the crab, no more than a yard from it. The coconut had fallen to the ground and cracked open, I assumed, when a vehicle drove over it. There was a significant piece missing from the top.

I moved closer to a point where I could see the white coconut meat inside. There was a small hermit crab wandering around the bottom. The coconut crab froze for a moment, acknowledging my presence.

Moments later it reached into the coconut with a claw, brought up the hermit crab, studied it for a second or two, then tossed it on the ground. It reached down once again and almost as quickly brought up a one inch chunk of coconut meat and deposited the morsel inside its cavernous opening that passes for a mouth. The coconut meat lay there, waiting to be digested.

The crab reached down inside the nut once more but I guess in my excitement I moved a little too close for comfort. The coconut-eating crustacean froze once more, then decided it was time to leave. It hopped off the nut and ambled toward the beach. My big regret was that I left my camera in my room.