I just wanted to write and let you know what's been going on around here. I know you've been busy and it's so hard to keep in touch these days. Tell me about it. Actually, I have a couple of reasons for writing, good and bad.
First, the good news. On a recent trip to Maui to look for some rare snails I was overcome with the awesome power of your grasses. You'll be happy to know they are really living up to their true invasive potential. WOW! I had never seen grass envelop a tree! And not just any grass but a grass covered in some kind of sticky sap. But it looked so soft and fuzzy...how did you do that? I have to say, it was quite difficult to push through the chest high sea of it looking for the trees that were there in 2002. Oh, and congratulations on that noxious blackberry shrub thing. It was just hiding in that sea of grass ready to shred whatever got near it. You've got "sharp" nailed.
The bad news is that those snails I was talking about, those rare ones that look kind of like bark (max length 3 cm), and only exist on one ridge in West Maui, well, we were on that ridge and we think they're gone. We looked for 2 days with 5 people (all were experienced snailers).That's 100 man hours. We didn't even find a shell. We did find lots of evidence of a booming rat population and cannibal snails, both predators able to wipe out a small population, as you know. So that was pretty discouraging. We'll keep looking, though. You never know. Maybe they were hiding.
I just thought you should know, in case there's something you can do about that grass.