Firefly - Light Emiting Diode or Lights Emits Dies

Of all the weird and wonderful instances of insect behaviour found around the Caribbean – and there are ‘Hercules’ beetles six inches long in Dominica and ancient insects millions of years old caught in amber in the Dominican Republic – one of the loveliest and most distinctive is the firefly. To see one, meandering across your bedroom at night, or flickering in the garden, is one of those moments that give a feeling of real privilege.

Officially the firefly belongs to the family lamprydae, but of course it takes its common name from its characteristic of flashing at night. Which is of course a mating display. Males fly around flashing, in the hope of impressing a female on a nearby leaf. And if she likes the quality of the flash – apparently some are sexier than others - then she will reply with a responsive flash after a specific time period.

Generally Fireflies like dank, forested areas, particularly around streams and in gullies for instance (Fern Gully leading out of Ocho Rios in Jamaica used to have hundreds, but the petrol fumes have done for them now apparently). Equally they can be seen in gardens (near ponds and rivers). I was told once that they have just twenty minutes of ‘flash’, after which, it was said, they die. A high risk strategy, then.

Put two fireflies together and they will often flash in time. There are places in the world (though I have not heard of one in the Caribbean itself) where whole riverbanks of trees flash in time – on for a second, off for a second, on for a second, off. In the Caribbean you will have to be happy to see them individually. And, hopefully for them, in flash-induced pairs.

How to Eat an Orange - Markets in Santo Domingo

West Indians certainly do sales with aplomb. Market stalls are as carefully presented as art galleries. You might see a range of colour co-ordinated cigarette packets, a pyramid of avocados or a clutch of umbrellas all carefully leaning against one another so as not to fall down.

And if the set is worthy of a stage, then there is certainly drama and the ‘lyric’, with a constant backchat and sales patter, to bamboozle you into buying. Coconut salesmen call and shout then chop coconuts for you with a flourish of their machete and when you buy a snow cone in Jamaica you can expect the third degree – all to get a cup of crushed ice flavoured with some concentrate to give it taste.

But in the Dominican Republic they have what must be the most stylish way of... well, peeling an orange. It is a small metal machine. You fix the orange into a clamp and then start to wind – all with a theatrical flourish of course – and a sharp scoop then begins to cut into the peel, shedding the orange (or often green) skin right down to the bottom layer of pith, leaving a neat serrated pattern of rings. Chop the orange in half and you can scrape the flesh of the orange out with your front teeth. Perfect.

Returning to my favourite orange seller in Santo Domingo not long ago, I found that he had upgraded. Not the same at all, I thought. The old machine, the one he wound with a flourish, had been forsaken and instead there was a battery driven one, with a motor in the spiral shape of a huge inner ear. But hey, he executed it all with the same dexterity and drama. And the orange was as juicy and sweet as ever before.