![]() After all, his restaurant was the best on the Island, offering a live lobster pond and French Cuisine, and with high expectations he painted Anthony Bourdain’s name on the back of one of his chairs. When the American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain visited Bequia, one restaurateur in particular assumed that HIS dining establishment would be chosen by the famous man to feature in the Caribbean segment of the show. Mac figured that the Island’s police (all of whom were from the mainland and most likely had guns) were responsible for the bullet hole in the window, a hole which to this day is still there. I knew that people on the mainland ate manicou to some, the “wild meat” caught during the hunting season was a treat, but I had never met anyone from Bequia who hunted and ate the strange-looking creatures. One morning I woke up to what appeared to be a small bullet-hole in one of our bedroom windows, and Mac told me it had probably been made by someone hunting for manicou the night before. They can be pesky in other ways as well some of the power outages that occur at night are caused by manicous interfering with the electricity transformers, and I have seen more than one electrocuted critter hanging from electrical wires over the years. They can (and often do) wreak havoc in chicken coops, and will happily explore a bag of garbage in their quest for food. They eat grubs and bugs, but also rats, roaches, roadkill and anything else they may consider edible. Manicous are nocturnal, which means they have to rely heavily on a strong sense of touch and smell while hunting at night. Manicous are NOT pretty creatures, and although hunted throughout the Caribbean Islands I have never been tempted to cook or eat one. I have always thought that manicous look a lot like hairy rats, although they have a more pointed nose and are of course considerably larger than the average rodent. The manicou’s tail is very long and whip-like, extremely strong, and is bare like that of a rat. ![]() The manicou is also known as the black-eared opossum, but doesn’t have the opossum’s furry tail. ![]() When the babies are big enough, they ride on the mother’s back, where they stay until ready to fend for themselves in nature. They live and grow inside the pouch, where they are able to feed on the mother’s nipples, and the pouch expands as they grow. She normally gives birth to several babies, 16 – 20 or even more, and does so only 12 or 13 days after having mated! This is an unusually short gestation period, and the babies are extremely small when born. The manicou is a marsupial mammal, and although it looks like an opossum it’s actually family to the kangaroo! The female manicou carries her young in a pouch just like a kangaroo, and totes them about in that fashion for quite a while. ![]()
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