Stuff. i dont even know anymore
holy shit, it was because the interpolation settings call was  being run after the javascript file call. now, it displays the hard-coded test list correctly, albiet before the click.
fix list population issue by segregating index into index and birdlist, as well as geo.js into listpopulation.js
delete extraneous html in index.erb
merged ALL THE THINGS
deleted extraneous files