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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