Long live our legendary and invaluable Bajan Mongooses!

       
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 simply all    
the same, you were urgently required.   
Principally so, as a basic deterrent to   
the bevy of rather lethally dangerous   
snakes that freely perused their way   
across this Caribbean idyll and also   
effectively specifically so within the   
confines of the rather copious, and   
too natural luxurious growth of the   
cane fields that liberally festooned   
it. Snakes, which were very deadly   
predators to the plethora of rather   
skilled cane cutters, quite general   
harvesters; and, as well, the other   
allied artisan workers in that very   
huge and quite 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 also similarly saw, the complete
eradication of these very poisonous    
and likewise deadly snakes not just    
simply from the clearly prosperous    
cane fields per se; but likewise too,     
the very entirety of Barbados itself,    
and a task so distinctly, effectively    
and evidently quite brilliantly done    
that these now undoubtedly Bajan    
mongooses had actually, and very    
effectively also made themselves    
clearly redundant. Decisively now    
as it happened, with their distinct    
bountiful and equally natural prey    
gone but significantly no pending    
successors, clearly discernibly in    
the offing; understandably, some    
among the patently adventurous    
mongooses did collectively, and
effectively, imaginatively take to    
actually diversifying their eating    
habits; and, not so unsurprising,    
the eggs, which were laid in the    
cane fields, by those free range,    
domestic hens, now essentially    
crucially became their effective    
targets, literally in tandem, with    
any chicks haplessly born then.  
 
A state of affairs that didn’t go  
down so well obviously with  
the owners of such poultry,  
notwithstanding the known fact, that  
the snakes that the mongooses had  
so essentially, obviously eradicated  
had themselves previously and too  
quite frequently, crucially done the  
same things. However quite short  
and very convenient memories by  
these effectively local and mainly  
rural dwellers obdurately refused  
to see the logical irony of what in  
effect, they were quite petulantly  
and equally selfishly demanding,  
namely the complete, wholesale  
destruction of not only the clear  
quite significantly offending but  
basically likewise as well all the  
mongooses there actually were
throughout Barbados, although  
their very undoubted presence,
collectively and quite evidently  
rather effectively on our island  
had unquestionably, saved the  
lives of several human beings!
Predictably, literally Barbadian  
common-sense prevailed, and  
actually with sugar cultivation  
now increasingly minimalized  
by new industries like tourism  
and similarly others very aptly  
appropriate to a modern 20th  
century, and likewise also the  
clearly forthcoming 21st one;  
these Bajan mongooses also,  
haven't only earned their very  
discernibly undisputed place  
in Barbados, but just like the  
quite conic, and so uniquely  
black belly sheep have also  
irrefutably also literally and  
characteristically distinctly  
shaped a quite indigenous  
character truly of their 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.