Troll Echos

I’m not sure if insects can fly hundreds of miles across open ocean, or for that matter, if they even want to, but as far as I can tell they can’t.  St. Lucia was delightfully lacking in the typical insects of the Northeast.  I don’t recall seeing a single mosquito dispite the almost constant presence of puddles and standing moisture they so love.  We as honeymooners were not alone on the island however.

Everywhere you look there were frogs the size of a quarter, large snales, and lizards that would impress Geiko.  Whether they were actually geckos or not I have no idea. The frogs hung out on frondy plants that hung near the short sidewalk lights that were all over the grounds of the resort.  My wife and I came to call them “Frog condos” thanks to the multi-layered housing effect and the fact that we often so more than one of them near a single light.  The idea of housing or warmth was quickly replaced with the reality that they were hanging out for a midnight snack made up of any tiny light attracted bugs that were silly enough to pass within tongue range of the tiny amphibious hunters.

During the day lizards basked in the sun on anything they could find.  Sometimes it was the same lights the frogs made into hunting zones, other times it was random guard rails or plants, but most often it was literally in the middle of the sidewalk.  My initial thoughts at this pattern were along the lines of “well, I guess you are next on evolutions list to elimitate for playing in traffic.”  How truly wrong I was.  Never in my life have I seen an animal so like a ninja before.  3 inches of lizard could go from apparently asleep in the sidewalk to simply gone before you even knew it was moving.  They moved very quickly, and were nervous enough about people that you couldn’t even get closer than about 4 or 5 feet from them before they did their vanishing act again.  This turned my wife and I into very frustrated photographers indeed.

On the exact opposite end of the speed spectrum was the humble snail in its not so humble shell.  They were large, they were slow, and frankly they were short lived.  I personally squashed at least one during our stay by stepping on it in the dark without knowing it was there.  Walking up the roads at night revealed that they didn’t have much better luck with vehicle traffic either.  There were creepy slippery smears of snail guts and shell bits all over the roads every night just waiting for the next day’s torential rain to wash them away into oblivion.

It should stand to reason that countless pirate songs can’t all be wrong when describing the islands.  They drink a lot of rum.  I had no idea how much in fact.  They have types and flavors of rum you have never heard of, half of which would make any self-respecting pirate blush a little.  If the idea of chocolate rum, orange rum, and even ginger rum aren’t out there enough for you, they also make drinks using these crazy rums by adding everything from fruit juice to actual fruit to cream and an unlimited number of other things.  If you don’t like rum, you should consider visiting some other part of the world that hasn’t yet made its way into pirate songs.