Barbados/West Indian/Acerola berries do taste sweet with an invigorating flavor when they are allowed to ripen to a deep maroon hue. ‘Allowed to ripen’ being key. Not by humans, nah! But by the numerous birds that crave it’s taste, flavor and are drawn to it, possibly by the color, the refreshing aroma (can birds even smell, you ask? Some can, maybe even many or most do) or a combination of the two: visual and olfactory. And they pluck the fruits whole and swiftly fly away to enjoy the delicious prize with their family and friends (birds are sharing and caring). The deed is slyly committed in the dead of the night or in the still of the scorching daylight without leaving a trace and escapes the lazy human gaze. But this lazy human decided to do the unexpected and brave the tropical heat and walk barefoot on the searing hot terrace floor and interrupt the merry raiding party comprising of a congregation of birds cackling away till they spotted the human sizzling in the summer heat 🥵 and glaring at them in growing disbelief. Crows, Rufus treepies and Greater coucals…rose in unison majestically bathed in the golden sunlight, their eyes averted from the accusing biped’s eyes before flying away in different directions. And that precisely is what provoked the human to (reluctantly yet determinedly) lay a net over the plant and eventually discover the true sweetness of a fruit that was hitherto dismissed and ignored as being too sour.
Some images to accompany the lines. The berry, the netted plant and the brooding coucal plotting a heist.
A.R Sara 