By Jasmine George- Morning sun is rising over the Essequibo Coast. In the Suddie Housing Scheme, a small flock of black-bellied sheep, two with lambs in tow, are venturing out to begin the day’s grazing. A man on a bicycle follows them, warily watching a rakish brown dog, who pads behind them with his mouth watering.
Neon yellow and pale green butterflies dance in the heating air, jumping from hibiscus blossom to hibiscus blossom and back again, in the dense foliage that lines the street.
Hidden among these jewel-toned insects is a female hummingbird. She rests on a delicate red-black bough for a moment, nearly invisible in the viridescence. A careful observer would spy her soft black eyes in the brightening light, but the man on the bicycle is not looking. He has business to attend to.
The brown dog meets a black dog, the latter squirming from beneath a fence to greet the former. A friend of his, it seems. They touch noses, collapse onto the sand to wrestle, growling and snarling good-naturedly.
One of the lambs bleats fearfully at the noise. The man thinks of when he was a child–pelting stones at these yard dogs and fleeing on bare feet when they saw fit to chase him, raising a cloud of dust as he ran.
A shadow passes over the street. The stretched wings of the roadside hawk cause the little denizens of the scheme to scatter–the little brown geckoes and blue-green iguanas in particular.
The roadside hawk seeks them–he sees all, but he has business to attend to. His mate nests in a turpentine mango tree. Their young squall for their breakfast, and, in his deadly beak, he holds the body of a blue-gray tanager.
On the power lines outside of the Jaigobin supermarket, six kiskadees are having an argument. Someone has dropped an entire packet of plantain chips on the road. Obviously, this prize should go to the largest and handsomest, he with the brightest yellow belly, but all six birds believe that they are he. So they buse.
They scream like children. They pick feathers, showering the street with black and yellow. When the matter is settled, they look down to see that the chips have been carried off by a black-and white tanager.
The man on the bicycle comes to his destination. A small clearing, shaded thickly by tamarind trees, shot through with clumps of wild cane. A trench runs through it, sporting huge, pink blossoms, some opened., some half-opened, some still tight buds, reaching up from the water, between the wide flat lily pads.
He sighs to himself with muted relief as his sheep stream into the clearing, one of the lambs headbutting his mother to nurse. He will lose no more lambs this season, but he does not know it.