No birds, the snakes killed them all...no joke. Don't venture off into the jungle areas or you end up like the birds.

The stipend is $1200/month and you do start at 2nd year pay. I hear that the biggest detractor is the education system if you have school aged children. I've been here since last spring and no one that I know of has been forced to go there, in fact I know of a few guys who left because the couldn't get there, went to Cathay. Never flown there at CAL but have done a lot of time there in the C-141/C17A. The snakes were a gift from the US and not indigenous. They came over on B-17/B-36's from the PI during WWII. They are Brown Snakes that you'll see sunning themselves on the airport fences and pose no real harm to people. Caveat, one guy cracked his skull when he found one on the main gear of a B-52 during the walk-around. I always let the Co-Pilot do the walkarounds there.