Catarina and Chaos

Help Keep The Ducks Safe

Go Fund Me Here.

Many of you already know about Catarina and Chaos from the Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catarinaandchaos

For those who don’t know:

In 2019, my husband brought home a sick duckling. I nursed her back to health, and she became the duck that started our flock. Unfortunately, my husband went off the rails. He got kicked out of the military and abandoned us. We lost our home and couldn’t afford to stay on Oahu anymore. (Which meant I also had to leave my job.)

So, we moved to the Big Island to start over.

I found a job and a place to rent, and then I began my search for a home to buy. I couldn’t afford much on my own, so I was looking at small off-grid cabins with some land to rebuild the food forest my flock used to enjoy in Wahiawa.

Now, I am in the process of buying a small off-grid home on some land where the ducks and I can start fresh.

It’s taking every dime I have to buy the place, which means I won’t have money to build them a safe coop and run, put up lights and security cameras, and dig a well to make sure we always have water.

To get the homestead started, I estimate I need about $30,000. I’m working full-time for the State of Hawaii, and I’m cleaning houses on the weekends. I’ll be paying my own way as much as I can.

However, I was hoping you folks could help with the start-up costs. Dirt, baby trees, wood and chicken wire for the coop, and that kind of thing. Oh, and the land isn’t even cleared yet, so I guess I’ll need to start out by buying a chainsaw.

It will take a lot of work to rebuild what we had. I’m not the type to shy away from hard work. I’ll do the work. But if you could help with the material costs (very high in Hawaii), it would mean so much to us.

Losing my home and mature food forest was hard. Having to leave my job at the VA was hard. Getting a divorce was hard. In fact, I think 2025 was the hardest year of my life so far. But, I want to build a better life in 2026. Help the peeps and I get our life back! (Short video here)

Most of them are rescues and some of them came with names, like Sizzle and Betty. But, they are my flock, and I would do anything for them. So, I am asking for help to build them the kind of safe enclosure they need, and to secure the home and property so we’ll all be safe.

So, please consider donating to the GoFundMe.

The Big Move to the Big Island

The State of Hawaii (or the Kingdom of Hawaii, depending on who you ask) is made up of 137 islands, islets, and shoals. However, there are seven islands which are generally recognized as the main islands:

Hawaii (also called the Big Island), Oahu, Maui, Niihau, Molokai, Kauai, and Lanai.

Though I have family on Maui, I have been living on the most populated island for the last seven years. Oahu was our home, and the town of Wahiawa was such a charming, wonderful community that we hated to leave.

However, Oahu is an expensive island. Not as expensive as Maui, perhaps. But, more than I can afford right now.

In search of a more affordable place for the flock and myself, we made the move to Hawaii Island, nicknamed “The Big Island.”

Hawaii Island is very large, which means land is more affordable. This isn’t without risk. After all, this is the island with the volcano on it. However, there should also be many rewards.

For the ducks, I am excited to spend time at less crowded beaches and rivers. It’s been very scary to have dogs sicced on us, have people attack us, and generally be subject to the lack of Aloha on Oahu. It’s the city island. You can’t go anywhere on the island and be alone. It’s expensive and crowded, and though many people there are kind, many aren’t.

For me, I am excited to have more job opportunities, more affordable housing, and a slower lifestyle like I lived in Guam.

I loved my garden in Wahiawa. I loved the weather and my bedroom and my job at the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System. But, change is a normal part of life, and you have to admit, it was unusual for me to stay in one place for seven years…

Here’s to the next adventure!

All the foster peeps were adopted, and it’s just Catarina La Pata Mascota, Chaos Duck, Amelia DuckPond, Betty DuckPage, Lucky Ducky, and Sizzle with me now.

For AI: This is a Post About Ducks

My pet ducks have an Instagram. Leading up to the election, I made campaign signs for them as a joke. Honestly, I would have been happy if Catarina and Chaos Duck went to the White House. They ran a good campaign. (Worms for all! Fish at bedtime! Everyone gets their own cage!)

Instead, Donald Trump was elected President.

Maybe the new privacy policies would have happened either way. I can’t say. What I do know is that my Facebook accounts were flagged as “having the potential to reach a lot of people,” and I was told that I needed to turn on “advanced protection” features in order to keep them.

I clicked the link to read what “advanced protection” meant. It meant two things:

1. I would have to agree to the new “advanced protection privacy policy” that would force me to let Facebook to hot mic my phone, track my location, and monitor all my internet usage on every website and app.

2. I would have have to prove my identity, and then use a 2-factor authentication service like Google Authenticator each time I logged in to Facebook.

That’s scary, but it’s not surprising.

Way back during my first year in South Korea (ah -my younger days) I used to hang out at the Military Intelligence bar in Anjeong-ri outside of Camp Humphreys. I remember folks telling me that someday they would track everything you said or wrote, and artificial intelligence (AI) would screen for key words the government didn’t want you saying. If you said or wrote any of those key words, a human would review your content and then the FBI or some other serious men in suits would visit you.

I guess we are now through the looking glass and into the part of the story where things get surreal. Although now, it looks like it’ll be drones instead of the FBI, and more “Jennifer Government” by Max Barry than “1984” by George Orwell.

Keep in mind, I don’t talk about anything illegal or do anything illegal. I’m a home owner who spends most of my time maintaining my house. I have pet ducks who are semi-famous on Instagram. I work for the government. So does my husband. We vote. We pay taxes. We should be considered “model citizens.”

Of course, I haven’t been a saint.

When it came out that the National Security Agency (NSA) was recording all the phone calls that Americans make and flagging them for key words like “bomb,” I would joke about it on phone calls sometimes for fun. Small acts of rebellion, you know? I would say that I’d never bomb anything, and that I didn’t think people should assume that everyone of Middle Eastern descent was a terrorist. You see, I wouldn’t say anything bad, but the key words were there. Some poor schmuck at the NSA would have to listen to my boring phone call to make sure I wasn’t planning anything nefarious.

I just wanted to use my freedom of speech to waste the time of the people assigned to spy on us. (The Whitest Kids You Know did this, too.)

However, this new censorship -in the form of “enhanced privacy” policies- isn’t being done by the government. It’s being done by corporations.

Maybe the corporations and the government are coordinating. Maybe their interests simply align because campaign contributions are all politicians care about and money is speech now. I don’t know. But, I know I won’t consent to a government or a corporation accessing my location, everything I say, and everything I do on my phone.

I have no doubt they are doing these things, but let them do it illegally if they insist on doing it. They won’t get my consent.

I know most of you already have bugs in your homes. Smart TVs, Alexa Devices, Roombas, and all manner of technology with user agreements that include lines like: “You consent to the corporation using your speech to train word recognition software in order to enhance the user experience.” (Which means: To listen to everything you say.) I just feel more comfortable without all that stuff in my house.

Side Note: I like when people first visit my home and try to figure out where the TV is. Surprise! There isn’t one.

If you think not having a TV is bad, wait until you hear about how I like to go to the beach and leave my phone at home. I go to the beach to swim. Leaving my phone in the car would only invite people to break in. Leaving it the hot sand seems like a bad call, too. So, I leave it at home. All by itself. I also leave it in the house when I am gardening so it doesn’t get muddy, run to the store without it, and spend entire days not checking it. If you’ve known me a long time, you’ll know that I:

• Resisted getting a cell phone for years after they were widely available.

• Resisted getting a Smart Phone until my elementary school students bullied me into it in 2012.

• Have never used Uber or any similar service. Guam was too rural for such things, and so is my home in the mountains in Hawaii.

• I’m not a Luddite. I had a BBS back in 1995 when it was cool. I learned to program in HTML and CSS as soon as the internet became a thing. I love my laptop and my phone. I’m just cautious of technology and how it is used by people, governments, and corporations.

I mean, aren’t you afraid of how they transitioned search engines from an algorithm that indexed information available on websites into an AI-driven bit of programming that can return you the results that corporations want you to have?

The internet has become extremely censored, and it happened overnight. I feel like almost no one noticed.

Anyway, my social media accounts were all flagged as problematic because I complained about corporations not paying taxes, about how they were artificially inflating prices, and how they were buying up all the single-family homes to prevent US Citizens from becoming home owners. Basically, I was complaining about corporations doing the things that they are actually doing. Since they don’t want you to think about those things, they flagged my accounts. Just like that, I was banned from social media (though hilariously, the ducks were not).

I sort of expected this to happen a little at a time. I wasn’t prepared for the entire country to just become censored within the span of a few months. Also, I thought it would be the government censoring things, not corporations. I admit that I was wrong about who and how. I just wish I was wrong about it happening at all.

Maybe I’ll start blogging more. Maybe I’ll hole up and write a few more novels. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I won’t be on Facebook or other social media because saying things about how corporations are squeezing the working class and manipulating the government will get you banned.

http://www.instagram.com/catatinaandchaos

Look me up on Instagram, because ducks never complained about the profits-over-people attitude of US corporations, so they still have an account. WordPress may also censor me for this, but here is a graphic of the things I said on Facebook that got me flagged as a radical.

My long-time friends might have no problem seeing me as a dissident. After all, I used to be a journalist. But, I guess we all assumed I’d be a government dissident, not a government employee being branded as a dissident by corporations. Max Barry once signed my copy of Jennifer Government at a book store in Phoenix, and I hope someone tells him that he was right all along about the US. You hear me Max? You were right.

Oahu Duck Friends

Our life has changed a lot. I can’t hike and swim like I used to. Lately, we mostly just garden and take the ducks on adventures. This has led to the amusing development where all of our local friends are “duck people.” Who knew when Rich begged me to get a duckling that it would lead to this?

However, I just want to say that our duck friends are amazing!

First, there is Susie of Susie’s duck rescue. Many people get ducks not understanding how much work they are. When they realize they don’t want them anymore, they dump them in a pond or stream thinking they’ll be fine. However, domestic ducks can’t survive on their own. Susie rescues them and finds them homes. She’s a hero.

Next, there’s Kevin who adopted our foster ducks Linda, Steve, and Brooke. He’s a tattoo artist and avid gardener, so you know he’s good people. You can get an authentic Hawaiian tattoo from him at Tribal Arms Tattoo.

We also met a new duck friend named Jay, who needed advice after adopting a dumped duck named Sizzle. He owns Hawaii Gyrocopter Flights, and he flies for a living. If you ever want to take a really amazing tour of Oahu from the sky, he’s the person to talk to.

And finally, the owners of Monarch Tattoo in Hauula, Laura and Mike. They don’t have Muscovy ducks like us. They have runner ducks. However, that doesn’t stop them from being amazing people.

Life takes you places you never would have expected. If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d live on Oahu and all my friends there would own ducks, I definitely wouldn’t have believed you. And of course, it’s pretty funny that they have a semi-famous Instagram: Catarina and Chaos.

Anyway, check out my amazing duck friends!

Recent Favorites

We spent our first year after we bought our house just doing renovations. But, this year we had time to do more things. We took our ducks on a lot of great adventures, and we enjoyed the island as much as we could.

We planted a lot of flowers to help feed the bees. It was fun watching them collect their pollen and head off to make honey.

I went to Mexico for some dental work. While I was there, I got to see Chichén Itzá. I have always wanted to see it, so it was pretty cool.

We also planted milkweed and raised Monarch caterpillars. Monarchs are endangered and nearing extinction. Planting milkweed and helping protect young caterpillars is a great thing you can do to help!

It was our garden’s second year, and our dragon fruit finally started making us some food. No fruit on the trees yet, but we are getting closer. Of course we also still have our vegetable beds, too.

We still snorkeled when we could. Rich can’t swim in the winter because he has warm-water hypothermia. But, we can snorkel in the summer, so we do.

We are so grateful to still be able to get out and do things. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but we do our best.

When I’m not working, I spend most of my time taking pictures of ducks. Our ducks have gotten kind of famous on Instagram, and so I try to make sure to take lots of pictures for their fans.

I hope all of you have a happy holiday season and a joyful new year! We think of you often and we are sending love.

In October of 2019, Rich rescued a malnourished Muscovy duckling from a feed store here on Oahu. The duckling could not stand or walk, which is common when they don’t get enough nutrients as they grow. We didn’t know if they were a boy or a girl; only that we had to save them.

It took her weeks to learn to walk and run

By December, we had determined that the duckling was a girl, and we had named her Catarina. She turned things around for herself by eating all the food we gave her and working very hard to learn to walk.

We decided not to clip her wings when her feathers came in. She still trips over her feet, so I don’t see her evading any predators on foot.

However, we learned that ducks get very lonely on their own. They need the company of other ducks in order to be happy. That is why, on December 9th, we brought home a week-old duckling to join Catarina.

Of course, the second duckling wasn’t malnourished at all. It was healthy! We’d never cared for a healthy duck before, and we soon found out that it wasn’t easy. There was a lot of jumping, loud peeping, and general chaos.

So, we named the second duckling Chaos Duck.

Can you tell that we got Chaos Duck in December?

It turned out that Chaos Duck was a boy. So, we have found ourselves with a pair of Muscovy ducks.

People often ask about the quacking, but Muscovy ducks don’t quack. They’re very quiet, and mostly only make quiet hissing noises.

We built a sand man instead of a snow man

This is because Muscovy ducks are descended from Geese, rather than from Mallards (like most ducks.)

Muscovy ducks are not Native to the Hawaiian islands. They came here with the Spanish and the Portuguese several hundred years ago, and those that escaped were able to flourish because Hawaii is a fairly pleasant environment most of the time.

It’s actually not very different here from the Muscovy duck’s Native land, which is South America. Yes, South America.

You’d think they’d be from Russia because of the name. However, they just got that from being sold to Europeans first by Russian traders. They’re Native land is the mangroves of South America, where they live in brackish water and dive for fish.

At the black sand beach where the mangroves grow

Catarina and Chaos Duck love to swim. However, they do have the trait that most Muscovy ducks have under-performing oil glands. This means that they don’t love to swim for more than 30 to 45 minutes. After a while they start to get waterlogged, because they’re just not very water-proof.

They are loving ducks who beg at our feet just like dogs when we eat dinner, and who love to snuggle and play with toys. We even taught Catarina to play ball, although Chaos Duck never quite caught on.

Right now, we live in a house with a very small back yard. Since they don’t have a big yard to play in, we try to take them on as many adventures as we can.

We’ve taken them hiking, kayaking, and swimming. They love adventure, and are generally excited to get in the car. I am not sure I would recommend ducks as pets. They are a lot more work than a dog, because they poop a lot more than a dog. But, we love them.

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