Returning to St. John roads requires some adjustment. It’s not just remembering to drive on the left and handling the steep hills that turn into rivers when it rains.
You also have to watch out for all the unusual traffic.
Like the bands of roving donkeys that block the North Shore Road and refuse to move because adoring tourists have trained them to think that jeeps mean treats – or else…
Up on Centerline, it’s cow country.
Coming and going….
They don’t want anything from you – just doing their own thing at their own pace.
There are also pigs up there.
And goats.
Along the road by Frank Bay near town, you have to watch out for peacocks crossing.
In Fish Bay there are great egrets leisurely looking for lizards.
It is hard to miss the chickens.
Whole families of chickens like to run out into the road just as you approach. Really, why do they do it?
Then there’s the slow-moving traffic in the low-lying areas.
You may have to be patient when you find an iguana taking a nap in your lane.
Or a hermit crab taking a stroll.
A deer knows to move out of the way of an oncoming car.
Unlike a donkey, which will just stand there like an ass until you decide to back up and squeeze around it.
Drive carefully!
Photos by Gail Karlsson. Gail is an environmental lawyer, and author of The Wild Life in an Island House, plus the guidebook Learning About Trees and Plants – A Project of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of St. John. uufstjohn.com/treeproject. For more articles and local information, go to gvkarlsson.blogspot.com or www.fishbaywetlands.com. Contact: gkarlsson@att.net Instagram:@gailkarlsson
