One final Barbados thought to share...

On the way to the airport with fields of sugar cane on either side of the road, I asked the driver if they had many snakes in Barbados ? "None", he replied "Not since they introduced the Mongoose"
"You'll have plenty of rats then ?"
"Oh, yes. Loads of rats".

We'd seen several kind of stoatey/ferrety things which must actually have been mongoose, crossing the road.

So Rikki Tikki Tavi was alive and a well and living in Barbados. Isn't the mongoose native to India ?

Further communication with our marine biologist friend - of Nigel, the turtle fame - elicited the fact that actually Barbados never did suffer from a snake problem. They have a few harmless grass snakes although these have reduced in number to perhaps two and one of them hasn't been seen for twenty years ! The problem with the sugar cane was that the rats were eating it and that's why the mongoose was introduced.

Quite why the government of Barbados thought that the mongoose - whose staple diet is snake - would decide that rat would be the dish of the day, no one really seems to know. Worse still, rats climb and the mongoose doesn't. And worser still the active hours of the two creatures appear to be at opposite ends of the day. The rats are awake at night and the mongoose are awake during the day, so generally they don't meet up much. Makes you wonder what the mongoose have been living on, or rather it doesn't because they ate all the harmless grass snakes which is why there are only two left.

Man's intervention in nature, as ever an unholy cock up !

Duncan