This Means War
When I first moved to St. John in 2002, I was excited to get to know the local fauna. The mongoose were adorable, the iguanas were great to take photos of, and my first donkey sighting felt like just about the coolest thing ever. I could deal with the occasional pig...
Playing God to Hermit Crabs
The hermies are restless. It happens two or three times a year. All of a sudden, the hermit crabs in my yard are active and plentiful. They're making quite a bit of noise these days. Granted, my remote hut in the woods is superlatively peaceful. But I've found that...
Cane Toad Calamity
It started out as a wonderful evening. Our 13-year-old French bulldog Algernon had just won first place in the Best Old Timer's division at Wagapalooza. As the shadows lengthened on the ball field in Cruz Bay, I held Algernon up in the middle of the roaring crowd and...
Learning to Tread Lightly
“What is making all that racket?” an inquisitive friend of ours asked. It was his first summer on the island, and we watched as he searched in vain for the source of the noise beyond our patio. “Oh, that? We almost don't hear it anymore. Those are tree frogs.” “Sounds...
Island Bedmates
When my (now) husband and I moved back to St. Croix, we had dreams of living in a quaint Caribbean cottage with a white picket fence, complete with island guard dogs roaming the yard. However, thanks to our first landlord's No Dogs policy - small snag in the plan - we...
Island-style Coping Mechanism: Disgust, Adjust, Delude
Sometimes in life, we obtain knowledge that is not always immediately applicable to us. Our wondrous brain manages to hoard it all in an organized fashion within its deep recesses (without even so much as an intervention by The Container Store), gifting us with useful...
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