an almost ripe mango on tree

It seems that my early morning war with the thrushies is about to take a new course. Just as President Obama is shifting his attention military from Iraq to Afghanistan, I will be shifting the focus of my battles from Mangos to Night blooming cereus.

The enemy, in my case, is the Pearly-eyed Thrasher, a bird, which we on St. John call thrushie.

According to Wikopedia, “the Pearly-eyed Thrasher (Margarops fuscatus) is a bird found in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Antilles. …The Pearly-eyed Thrasher is described as an aggressive, opportunistic omnivore that feeds primarily on large insects, but also feeds on fruits and berries, and will occasionally eat lizards, frogs, small crabs and other bird’s eggs and nestlings. It grows to 28 to 30 cm (11 to 11.8 inches) in length.

This villainous winged, bipedal, endothermic, vertebrate (bird) makes unruly ugly nests and announces itself with a shrill unmelodious screech. A known thief, the thrushie not only steals fruits from people’s fruit trees, but also teefs hamburgers and french fries from the Trunk Bay snack bar, the operators of which are waging their own war on thrushies.

In the mango war, for ultimate flavor and sweetness, it is always best to pick a tree-ripenened mango as opposed to an unripe one. As far as thrushies are concerned, they apparently also prefer the ripe to unripe.

mango after thrushie attack

The trick for me is to get to the mangos before the thrushies and to anticipate where the next attack thrushie  will occur. The battle must be won in the early morning or the thrushies will win.

For the last month or two, I have been harvesting perhaps the most delicious and most prized mangos on all of St. John, probably in the whole Virgin Islands. This year the harvest was excellent enabling me to be less greedy and possessive about the mangos and actually be able to give some away. By this I mean give some away to human beings, not  Thrushies.

Now the mangos are almost gone. The remainder hang from low branches, which for some reason seem safer from attack. I’ll continue the early morning vigil, however, until the last mango is harvested.

The next battleground will be the inhospitable environments in which grows the night blooming cereus.

The night blooming cereus, Hylocereus undatus, known also as Chickenette and Red Pitaya blooms during the St. John summer and produces a fruit soon afterwards. The night blooming cereus’ habitatis a generally unfriendly one, often growing in the midst of catch and keep and other spiny plants. As a result it is almost always cleared away when the land it occupies becomes developed and the plant is getting harder and harder to find.

The fruit turns from green to red as it ripens and this occurs over night. Early in the morning both thrushies and myself go after the ripe pitaya. Well, it’s that time of the year and the war’s on!

Bud Ready to Flower

Night Bloomin Cereus

Flower	Ripe Fruit
Inside	Sliced and Ready to Eat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 7:36 am and is filed under St. John USVI, St. John Virgin Islands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.