Island Paradise Day 41

Yesterday morning, to drag me out of my funk, Susan came over and insisted we go for a long walk down the back road . It is finally all dried out now, and navigable by foot and ATV. The walk was beautiful - lined with tropical hibiscus, mango trees, coconut palms, and mangroves. Susan brought along a book about all the indigenous plants that grow along the seashore in the Caribbean. I read the whole book and was delighted to find out that there are literally dozens of edible things I walk past every day. Who needs fresh herbs when you can eat the grass!

I am not sure what it is about foraging, but it excites me. I love to go in search of wild food, and was just so happy to see how many things here can be eaten. Of course, as I have learned in the past, just because something can be eaten, does not mean it should be – like poop eating land crabs, or like tropical almonds. They are everywhere here. You could literally pick up buckets of them every day off the beach. I tried to open some up though, and it was quite a task. The nut inside was so attached to the meat around it that it was impossible to excavate…literally, it needed excavating: I pried and pulled and hammered and by the time I was done there was a pulpy mess on my counter and not much else.

Sea grapes on the other hand, are not only edible, they are apparently quite delicious and - get this - can be made into wine. There is even a type of grass (grain) that grows wild that can be used to make flour. It has more protein than regular wheat and can be watered with seawater! Now if that is not a marketable cash crop for the developing world I don’t know what is! I can see it now…Corrie’s Seawater Bakery and Estate Winery…I mean, do we really need more beach bars??

Anyway, I also took some time to start training Tigra. She is doing really well with “Sit” but we are having some difficulty with “stay.”

She just wants to follow us everywhere. Yesterday after our walk Steph and I went swimming and Tigra came in with us and literally swam for 20 minutes in circles around us. It was so sweet. She refused to leave our side – even in six feet of water. I feel very sorry for her, as she is always just squirrely with itch from the mange, and as much as we want to show her love and affection, she is just, well, too mangy. Mange can be contagious to humans, so I will only touch her lightly on the head, and then always sanitize my hands afterwards.

Tigra is a good life lesson. She is ugly and mangy and comes across as nasty often growling and biting - just like people who have been hurt and mistreated - they can get pretty snarly too. But show a little love and tenderness, expect the best from people, and they will rise to the occasion. We are all broken - and it is amazing how far a little pat on the head will go.

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