Wednesday, March 15, 2017

The Welcome Wagon chickens of Cayman


We were waiting in the parking lot of the Save More Car Rental when I saw it.  The rooster.  Immediately I felt we had arrived.  It was not the walk down the portable staircase to the tarmac, or the humid air, or customs and immigration.  It was the rooster, pecking about in the gravel for a tasty morsel, or maybe for the gravel itself. 

On Grand Cayman, the chickens are as ubiquitous as sand, sea and tourists.  Roosters, hens and chicks.  No one gives them a second look – undoubtedly they perform an important function of keeping the insect population under control.  For me, it is a sign that Cayman is still in large part native.  Rue the day that the wild chickens are banished from running free on the island, for that is the day that Cayman will have begun to lose its uniqueness. 
(I walked across the street from our condo to find both of these roosters.  Their hens and chicks were more skittish and camera-shy.)

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