On Kauai, the mongoose has taken on almost a legendary status in local lore. Mongoose sightings are up there with wallabies in Nuuanu and the white lady in Iao Valley — as real as the wallabies, as feared as the lady ghost.

Mongooses (such an awkward plural noun, but not as bad as mongeese) are a topic that can fuel a backyard beer party for an hour. Everyone claims to have seen one or to know someone who saw one. Every so often, one of the sightings makes it into the news media. Traps are set. Maybe a couple of angry chickens get caught. Then the mongoose fervor subsides for a bit.

This has been going on for years. Decades. Successfully trapping a live mongoose is quite an accomplishment and hugely validating for all those Kauai people who spotted something darting across the road and had to ask themselves, "Mongoose or skinny cat?"

Kauai’s mongooseless status has been a source of fierce pride, right up there with being the only island not conquered by Kamehameha’s army and the surfer blockade of the Superferry. The stories vary on how, in 1883, Kauai became the only island to say no to a shipment of Jamaican mongooses brought in by sugar planters to control the rats.

In one account, Patricia Rice, wife of Charles A. Rice, tells a juicy tale about eight old-timers from Kipu carrying out a daring feat of espionage. According to Rice, the men borrowed two canoes, figured out when the ship containing the mongooses would be sailing from Honolulu, intercepted the vessel at sea and boarded the ship with a tale of seasickness. Once on the ship, Rice says, the men asked to see the animals. The cages were brought up to the deck like show-and-tell. The leader of the Kipu Eight, a man named Akau, then gave the signal and the four cages were thrown overboard. Everyone on board was sworn to secrecy. Before a second shipment could be ordered, the sugar industry was beginning to see that the mongooses liked eating bird eggs way more than rats.

Rice wrote: "The history books of Hawaii give different versions of the drowning. One says a severe storm caused the animals to fall off the deck and drown, another says that a mongoose bit a worker’s hand when unloading the case and he dropped it in the water, another says a drunk crewman threw the cages overboard when the captain disciplined him. Each crewman had his own version. The truth was never revealed, as long as any of the original eight men from Kipu were still alive. And when the last of the eight died, at age 88, the truth was forever buried with him."

That first mongoose-sinking of 1883, however it happened, was incredibly successful if it has taken almost 130 years to catch a live one on the island.

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Reach Lee Cataluna at lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.