While you are waiting for your kolea to take off for Alaska, here are a few plover stories to keep you entertained.

Dave Dressel in Nu'uanu has a kolea that lived in his big backyard until it discovered that his small front yard is a gold mine of earthworms.

For the past two months, this akamai kolea has been gorging itself on Dressel's earthworms to fatten up for the flight. When it has to go to the bathroom, it never soils the lawn but goes up on Dressel's lanai to do its business. Dressel stopped cleaning his porch until the kolea takes off.

Kolea and ruddy turnstone expert Phil Bruner at Brigham Young University-Hawai'i says kolea begin to leave around April 25, give or take five days, but they may be early this year. Can you guess why? It's because the heavy rains have flushed out a bumper crop of earthworms. The birds fattened up early.

Jean Teramoto on St. Louis Heights talks to her kolea. This bird looks at her through the window in a beguiling manner. She's afraid it's not getting enough to eat. Teramoto says, "Cheep, cheep, cheep," and the kolea answers. At least, that's what she claims.

The most unusual kolea story comes from Tsutomu "Bullet" Ueno, 75, who lives on three-quarters of an acre about two miles out of Hilo. There's this kolea in his yard he's carrying on an affair with. He calls her Sweetie.

Bullet heard that some people feed kolea bread and crackers. But he knows they like earthworms better. So he decided to see if he could get Sweetie to eat earthworms out of his hand. It turns out that that's there's a big supply on Bullet's three-quarters of an acre so he dug up some and put them on a plate.

At first, Sweetie turned up her, uh, nose. But little by little she started to come closer when he set out the earthworms. Finally, she snatched an earthworm from the plate and ran off with it.

Bursting with success, Bullet got himself a stick 4 feet long with a fork at one end. He put an earthworm in the fork and waved it under Sweetie's nose. Darned if she didn't gobble up the earthworm. By that time, Bullet was feeling like an animal trainer at the zoo.

Sweetie often perches on his neighbor's roof. Bullet started wolf-whistling and sweet-talking her and, by golly, she learned to fly to him to the whistle. More likely it was to the earthworms.

Then Bullet's 5-year-old granddaughter from Maui came to visit. Bullet set her on his lap on the lawn and put the stick in her hand with a worm at the end. Sweetie came right up and ate the worm.

Next, a 2-year-old grandson from O'ahu came to visit. Sweetie ate a meal of earthworms from the grandson. It's getting so that Bullet is constantly digging up earthworms to feed Sweetie. He digs up a three-day supply at a time. Fortunately, the three-quarters of an acre grows enough worms to keep Sweetie happy.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.