Bequia is an Island where animals can be a nuisance. Stray cats spray in your house, untethered goats eat your garden, mice nibble the insides of your cupboards and dogs howl all night long when the moon is full. All of these can be very annoying, but not as much as the birds I had to contend with when I opened my restaurant!
By the end of 1979 we were not yet a Pizzeria; for the first few months we operated as a bake shop to generate enough funds to get us up and running. I was an inexperienced baker flying by the seat of my pants, learning by trial and error as the days marched on.
The bread I baked each morning had to cool completely before it could be bagged in plastic, and was set on the broad ledge of the kitchen window on cooling racks. I needed the counter space for the rolling of bread dough and cinnamon buns, so the loaves had to cool where it was out of the way. The back window ledge was where I would put the trays of cinnamon buns to cool, it was a counter large enough for the big metal baking sheets.
The Island’s black birds immediately became a problem. They are called grackles here and are like ravens, sly and terrible thieves. I knew that the Frangipani Hotel had a problem with them in their dining room, I myself had experienced being dive-bombed while eating a sandwich there, it was not unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds!”. Son Mitchell, the owner of the hotel, went so far as to offer a reward for the capture of these annoying pests.
Every morning those grackles lined up on the railing in the dining room squawking, “Bequia sweet sweet sweet!”, just waiting for the bread to appear on the window ledge. Graham and I had to take turns swatting them away as they flew at the bread, trying to peck at it with their sharp beaks. I couldn’t afford to let them ruin even one loaf of bread, I had worked too hard to make it and needed the money it would sell for!
The grackles were bad, but that year I think the chickens earned the “best pest” award. The neighborhood yard fowls would run all over the dining room depositing mounds of chicken shit, and the more you chased them the more they shat. They would get under the kitchen door and up onto the counters, they seemed to be everywhere! Talking to the neighbors didn’t help, no-one had chicken coops and the yard fowls roamed at will.
One day I had taken the big tray of cinnamon buns from the oven, aromatic and golden brown. I set them on the back counter while Graham prepared the maple syrup glaze. As he turned to brush the tops of the buns a chicken flew up and landed right beside the tray. I quickly rushed to shoo it off the counter and scared the poor bird …… it ran straight across the fresh buns squirting a long stream of white poop the whole way. I had literally scared the shit out of it!
I looked at Graham, Graham looked at me, and he raised an inquisitive eyebrow. I said, “nah, we can’t do it”. I promise we didn’t serve cinnamon buns with white icing that day, I truly promise!