“Tomorrow, we search this island from one end to the other. They have to have a camp somewhere. In the meantime,” she (Emma) continued, hefting a rodent by its skewer, “I wonder how fat rat tastes?”
– Back to the New Adventure, Chapter 6: Exploring Samana, pg 54.
At the opening of “Back to the New Adventure“, Emma and Jack find themselves stranded on the desert island of Samana Cay in the West Indies. Searching for food and water will be their top priority. To help them out (as the author), I needed to know what there was for them to eat on Samana.
Lucayan Diet
To explore what might be on the menu for our two young sailors, I researched the probable diet of the native peoples who had once lived on the island.
The Lucayans, or “people of the islands”, are thought to have inhabited a wide swath of the West Indies when the first Spanish explorers arrived. These islands included Samana.
But what did they eat? Archeological discoveries have concluded that though the Lucayan diet included protein mainly from seafood, they did eat some terrestrial meat. One of those sources was a large rodent that was possibly semi-domesticated by the Lucayans for this purpose. Perfect!
Bahamian Hutia
The Bahamian Hutia is a broad-faced rodent with the small ears and eyes of a rat but the size of a rabbit. It has a short tail and a body-length of up to 60cm and weighs up to 9kg. Its fur can be a range of earthy colours, and it eats leaves, fruits, nuts, bark, seaweed, insects, and small lizards.
The animal was believed to be extinct, but in 1966 biologist Garrett Clough found a viable population on one of the Plana Cays, just south of Samana.
Though the Lucayans themselves were long absent from Samana by the time Emma and Jack arrived, I decided that if Garrett Clough could find Bahamian Hutia on a nearby cay in 1966, then there were likely still a few of those tasty rodents thriving on Samana in 1704. However, Emma did not know the hutia’s proper name and so she labeled them based on their appearance – a fat rat.
And that’s what’s behind the line in the quote above. 🙂