Page 4 - The Man in the Forest

The Man in the Forest

One night when the full moon was illuminating

everything in the night, my cousins Jaden, Jamal
and I decided to go to the forest in Mt Plaisir. We

were going to hunt for manicou or possum, as it’s

known in some countries. We had planned to

make a ‘cook’ of our national dish, ‘oil-down’, and

knew that the sweet, succulent flesh of the mani-
cou would give our oil-down that delicious,

Grenadian flavour.

We left our village in Old Road and made our way

up the steep Mt Plaisir road to the forest. The tall
trees that lined the road swayed in the gentle

breeze and the guard dogs outside of the unlit

houses barked at us ferociously as we trudged

along. We had all the equipment we needed to

hunt for our manicous. I had a ‘bang’, which is a
long, thin bamboo with a sharpened piece of

steel tied to the end, and was used to stick the

manicou. My cousins each had a pellet gun, and

we all had a cutlass, and a ‘fine’ bag (an empty

potato bag).

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