Viewing the local wildlife

Every time we come back here there's always something a little different.  In one year the entire garden went from being a barren rocky dessert to the lush green tropics, with fruit growing all over the joint.  There was even a giant bunch of bananas grown right in our garden, ripening out the back when we arrived this year, that someone had kindly put there. Cheers.

That's some serious smoothie ingredients

There are only so many ways you can do bananas though.  And for anyone wondering - yes you do get sick of them.  Very sick of them.  And sick of banana muffins, cake and bread. They are all basically the same thing anyway. This year we arrived to find we had two new pets in the backyard.  Two tortoises.  The owners wife had nabbed them from the bush for her twin grandchildren.  The fact that the owners have twin grand kids is extremely convenient for us.  There were two cots when we needed them, and now two single beds side by side.  There are two blue high chairs and two plastic potties.  There are two pushing trolley things and a ride on mouse and a tricycle.  There are also tons of kids plates, cutlery and glasses, cute straws and icy pole makers, a basket of musical instruments, barbies and outfits, games, books, DVDS, floating vests and so on. Again, Cheers.

Valli looks like she has stump arm in this one

Three cheers for two high chairs

But back to the tortoises.  I'm not sure if the girls have taken to them that much.  They're not the most cuddliest pets you could meet.  They also poo everywhere, and apparently bite.  We have limited our interactions to feeding Hasty and Speedy bits of mango, and taking photos of them eating it. See.

Speedy seems shitty

Hasty is a guts

Other animals we have around the homestead include geckos - or are they lizards; your usual tropical critters - iguanas; hummingbirds - that often get trapped at the windows and we have to rescue them with the pool net; butterflies in the garden by day; and fireflies by night. There are cute baby goats that air-lick all the time and wander around waiting to get cooked into a popular Caribbean delicacy - "curried goat" (you have to say it with a Caribbean accent, and perhaps add "I be eating the" first).

Destined for the curry pot

You can swim in the sea with giant turtles at a nearby island, or view them at the sanctuary.  Luckily for them, turtle is not a national food here the way it is in the Cayman islands, where they even have turtle burgers.  That shit does not look appetising.  The flesh is literally green.  Not here though.  Those little suckers are treated with care, and the turtle sanctuary really does release them to the sea rather than flog them off to McTurtles down the road.

Don't eat me

Mini burgers

It's not such a sanctuary for whales though. Bequia is one of the few places in the world where limited whaling is still allowed by the International Whaling Commission. Natives of Bequia are allowed to catch up to four humpback whales per year using only traditional hunting methods of hand-thrown harpoons in small, open sailboats. The limit is rarely met, with no catch some years.  Obviously piffing some homemade spear off a canoe doesn't do the trick like a Japanese steel custom-made whale maimer, heaved off a boat designed especially for sea-mammal death.  The Japanese should come and do a workshop here or something.

The arch is two whale jawbones

Obviously (and unfortunately) sometimes they succeed

There is also a particularly strange land mammal called a Marmaduke or a Manikin or something.  We first spotted one while out running last year.  Completely freaked me out.  It looked like a possum but with bulgy eyes, large pointy ears, and really sharp teeth.  It made a sort of guttural hissing sound and even though it was the size of a cat, it really held it's ground, and seemed up for an attack.  We called it a "hell creature", and the name stuck.  We saw another one wrestling a giant crab after that.  The fight was really on.  It had its whole mouth around the crab's shell, and the crab had a firm grip on the hell creature's nose with it's claw.  I was commentating David Attenborough style, until Chalks told me to put a sock in it.  I'd post a picture, but I cannot find any information on this mini beast anywhere.  Against begging and pleading from Chalky, I once tried to rescue a tiny mewing baby one, which was trapped on a pile of rocks.  It completely savaged me and I had to abandon ship.  I couldn't believe I'd got attacked by a fetus.

At least there's nothing poisonous here.  Even the snakes are pussies.  Can't say the same for the plants though.  After to go for a multi drop bush poo on one occasion, I was forced to wipe several times with the nearest leaves.  Heading back down the road I became aware of an excruciating burning sensation in the entire herdie gurdie zone.  Luckily Chalky had driven the car back to get me.  But by the time he arrived I was really screaming.  I grabbed a bottle of water out of the car and was pouring the entire thing down my pants and trying to wash off the leaf residue.  I'm sure it must have been quite the sight for the two construction workers strolling past.  They pretended not to look, but how can you ignore a half psychotic woman pouring litres of water up her arsehole on the side of the road, and screeching "it fucking buuuuuuurrrrnnnnsss".  That painful sensation continued for the next 12 hours.  My advice = Don't wipe with brazilwood leaves.  Apart from not even removing the original substance, the napalm-like finish is difficult to overlook.

Mummy it hurts.....

So if you come here, follow my advice: don't eat the turtles, avoid psychotic baby hell creatures, and always carry a wad of bog roll in your undies.  Just in case.