Long live our legendary and invaluable Bajan Mongoose!
By Stanley Collymore
You were expressly and happily both imported
and cheerfully welcomed into Barbados
where by no means whatever you
were literally indigenous to our Caribbean island;
but, all the same you were desperately needed.
Principally so, as an absolute deterrent to the
bevy of crucially, lethally dangerous snakes
that readily, perused their way across this
Caribbean idyll and most specifically so
within the confines of the very copious
and too luxurious growth of the cane
fields that festooned it. Snakes that
were quite deadly predators to the
plethora of evidently skilled cane
cutters, general harvesters; and,
as well, the other allied, artisan
workers in that very massively
and clearly profitable industry.
All told, a brilliant and imaginatively superb
outcome following this erudite action by
the local Barbadian decision makers
that quite rapidly and most effectively induced
and similarly saw the complete eradication of
these literally poisonous, and equally deadly
snakes not just simply from the exceedingly
prosperous cane fields per se; but likewise
the quite entirety of Barbados itself, and a
task so distinctively rather brilliantly done,
that these now clearly Bajan mongooses
had actually and rather effectively made
themselves redundant. Literally now as
it happened, with their clearly bountiful
and natural prey gone but crucially no
pending successors discernibly in the
offing, understandably some of these
adventurous mongooses collectively
and effectively imaginatively took to
diversifying their eating habits; and
not unnaturally the eggs laid in the
cane fields by free range domestic
hens now effectively became their
essential targets along with those
chicks which were haplessly born.
A state of affairs that didn’t go down so well
obviously with the owners of such poultry,
notwithstanding the fact that the snakes,
which the mongooses had essentially eradicated
had themselves previously and rather frequently
done the same things. However, short and very
convenient memories by these effectively local
and mainly rural dwellers, calculatedly refused
to see the basic irony, of what they were quite
petulantly and equally so selfishly demanding,
namely the quite wholesale destruction of not
just the offending but likewise significantly as
well all the mongooses throughout Barbados,
whose very undoubted presence, collectively
on our island, had unquestionably saved the
lives of countless human beings. Predictably
common-sense prevailed and therefore with
sugar cultivation progressively marginalized
by new industries like tourism, and similarly
others very aptly suited to the 20th and 21st
centuries; the mongoose also, has not only
earned its rather rightful place in Barbados
but like the iconic, and uniquely black belly
sheep has irrefutably too, characteristically
shaped an indigenous character of its own.
(C) Stanley V. Collymore
20 February 2023.
Author's Remarks:
In major tribute to the Bajan Mongoose. And our eternal and massive debt of gratitude to you.
