Wild Wild Life February 18
Rio Diego Martin is barely trickling through the Petit Valley today, but it can grow to a torrent in the rainy season, as it did last October. Our Birdman in Trinidad sees a Lineated Woodpecker on a Royal Palm, near the densely foliated shore of D’ego Martin, which provides a rich estuarial safe-harbor for egrets and herons. The river mouth beside my school is wide, completely tidal and, after dusk, full of mosquito vectors, which provide a feast for Boshe spawn, or Snook, and small free-tail bats. This giant woodpecker, certainly a dinosaur’s recent descendent, sizes up the green trunk of the palm along the banks, gripping the wet flesh with red-socked talons. It seems like a poor choice of tree for a woodpecker, but what do I know? The bird sees me staring and does not seem to care.
Croaking frogs refuse to show themselves in the sulphide muck. These are not to be confused with the infamous cane toads of the interior rainforest, with their poison secretions. They are called Crapaud in Patois, and they were once imported to Australian cane country, to disastrous ecological and sociological effect. Because they have no predators, they are free to be friendly and promiscuous. Pet owners here are warned not to let dogs or cats near the things and to keep water bowls inside, lest the animals convulse and die. The toxin is psycho-tropic and apparently addictive. “Crapaud smoke your pipe,“ they say, and it is not a good thing.
Parrots in pairs, always in pairs it seems, race across the sky with stubby wings flapping furiously. They are as graceful as your Auntie Aggie taking a tipsy fall, and their song is as shrill as an Edith Bunker sonata. Closer to home, the Japanese fisherman on the seawall lands a big angel fish with stripes like a zebra. A local calls it a Bat Fish, like a cricket baton against a white uniform, and he claims the meat is white and succulent, but I can only imagine dining at an aquarium.
The Hawksbill Turtle has become a regular at the waterfront. His gigantic sad eyes may speak volumes, but I cannot read them. He feeds on the slimy seaweed, but also expresses interest in fish guts. I resist the urge to bring a cabbage along to lure the curious creature closer, balancing the need to respect wild nature with my natural desire to tame a turtle. Now I will have to eat my own cabbage.
They say the Macaw has gone mad. He has taken his aerial show to my school campus, dive-bombing children during recess. Gabe complains of attacks on the football pitch, where practice was moved because the left wing and midfield man were having to duck during stoppages. Some say he is just being friendly, but friends should not draw blood from other friends. Last week, he descended on my demonstration of alkali metals in water, and the subsequent hydrogen explosion nearly took his feathers off. Not that I am trying or anything.
In news regarding the human animal, there is madness by design:
Spectators gather to watch men fight with sticks in a Saint James barbecue yard. The activity is heralded as a traditional rite, but, to the uninitiated, it seems like assault. There is no referee, no points to score, only blows to endure with a blunt object. Both young and old participate, with “bus’up ears and missin’ teet’,“ drunk with martial spirit, mano a mano. It starts with a drum dance, as each guy warms up to the music, facing the other, until one decides to strike the first blow; then it is fast and brutal and quickly over when someone falls and does not get up.
VS Naipaul was intimately familiar with stick-fighting, as expressed by his archetypal Mr. Biswas, from a century earlier:
“It was Mungroo who had organized the young men of The Chase into a fighting band, ready to defend the honor of the village on the days of the Christian Carnival and the Hindu Hosein. Under his direction and in his yard they practiced assiduously in the evenings by the light of flambeaux. The village boys went to watch the evening practice. So, despite Shama’s disapproval, did Mr. Biswas.
“As much as the game he liked the making of the sticks. Designs were cut into the bark of the Poui, which was then roasted in a bonfire; the burnt bark was peeled off, leaving the design burnt into the white wood…Afterwards, the sticks, their heads carved, were soaked in coconut oil in bamboo cylinders, to give them greater strength and resilience. Then Mungroo took the sticks to an old stickman he knew, to have them ‘mounted’ with the spirit of dead Spaniard. So that the ritual ended in romance, awe and mystery. For the Spaniards, Mr. Biswas knew, had surrendered the island one hundred years before, and their descendants had disappeared; yet they had left a memory of reckless valor, and this memory passed to people who came from another continent and didn’t know what a Spaniard was, people who, in their huts of mud and grass where time and distance were obliterated, still frightened their children with the name of Alexander, of whose greatness they knew nothing.“
Ketisha breathes fire. She takes a mouthful of native kerosene, called pitch oil, and creates art with an exhalation of flame. For this she has trained, taking a course at the UWI, University of West Indies, where Mas is treated as an academic matter.
In preparation for J’ouvert, she and her fellow students paint themselves completely blue and spew balls of burning petroleum vapor, taking the form of snakes and demons and plasmic sunsets. Just watch out for the Moko Jumbies, those mischievous spirits on stilts, with their ladles of painted mud, wearing kid-sneakers painted blue and glued to footholds. The scene is frivolous, scary, comical, mischievous and profound masquerade. Ketisha takes her art most seriously. Too much mischief from a fire-breather and someone dies.
“You have to drink milk the day before. It protects you.“ She spreads her fingers against her sternum to indicate the site of potential injury. It would seem that she would need to inhale the milk in order to provide relief for any bronchial singe, but I am not UWI-certified to give comment. This notwithstanding, wild dancing with long hair may pose a greater threat to the fire artist than the pulmonary risks. And then there is the matter of filling your pie-hole with pitch oil, a carcinogenic hydrocarbon. Just drink lots of milk. Carnival is reportedly worth it.