WATER'S-EDGE IN HAITI 



his barricade against unknown and therefore 

 imminent dangers of the night. He pushes it aside 

 and stands aloft beside his burrow. The new day 

 dawns for him alone as far as he knows, and three 

 problems await him; he must avoid danger and 

 death, he must seek and find food, and he must 

 detect and secure a mate to insure future offspring. 

 Not being a self-conscious "higher" animal, he 

 may avoid none of these sacred responsibil- 

 ities. 



It was at this moment that I settled down to a 

 comfortable position within my decayed and 

 stranded craft and watched him over the crumbling 

 stern-post. A small flock of blackbirds dashed 

 past the mangrove tree over my head, and the 

 fiddler dived side-ways into his hole. I stretched 

 out my hand, rested the tips of all five fingers on 

 the sand and waited. Soon the tip of an eye-stalk 

 appeared and then all of it, and the fiddler was 

 above ground again. He surprised me now, for 

 after only a few seconds he walked on toe-tips to 

 my thumb and gently nibbled it with his small claw, 

 then strolled around and between my fingers. His 

 sense of sight was apparently the dominant one, 

 for the odor of my hand, and as I subsequently 

 found, even the roar from a shotgun, conveyed 

 nothing. It is difficult to study fiddlers seriously, 

 they are so comical in their appearance and motions 

 and so absurdly like human gnomes, and yet the 

 slightest smile or laugh will send them headlong. 

 Whenever my fiddler came out from his burrow 



63 



