San Pedro Island, Belize

A rooster with spectacular plumage walked around a square enclosure surrounded by a two-foot-high plastic fence and a floor grided with numbers -one to ninety-nine- on the floor. The texture of rap-reggae music mixed with record scratching increased in tempo as did the volume of the crowd’s screams, cheers, fist pumping, and arm waving for the rooster to poop on one of the numbers. He strode majestically, hardly wavering, unmoved by the men and women leaning over the fencing to wave him toward their number. It seemed he had an innate account of the laws of randomness and wandered undeterred by the screams and gestures for ten minutes without even the faintest sign of excrement. This was the “Big Shit”, the winning number would claim one thousand Belizean dollars ($500 USD) but the rooster appeared fully engaged in the drama and withheld his deposition. The other rounds of the “world-famous” chicken drop held every Thursday at dusk would be worth merely 100 Belizean. In the previous round the hen had “dropped” on the line between numbers causing a “shit-split”, hence a sharing of the prize – the winners photographed together. Had the winners not been present, the monies would have gone directly into the long term well-being of that particular chicken.

The sun had dropped into the western sky and the last of the red and purple sunset colours on the east had waned. The wind that clattered loose windows and doors all day had died down and the sea, just steps away, barely made a sound, muffled as it was, by the algae along the shore. Locals of all shades – mixtures of black, mestizos, creole, East Indian, Asian, mixed race Mennonites – and tourists – mostly American, Canadian and European – danced and screamed, having bought $10 Belizean tickets for the “Big Shit”.

The rooster seemed unmoved by their antics, choosing to stride with an air of dignity, pecking occasionally at the seeds scattered into the enclosure. “This rooster don’t poop, man!” the announcer cried out and added, “it is time to bring in another chicken!” Cheers rang out and he shouted, “Chicken Security! Bring a second chicken!!” His assistant emerged from the back of the pub with a docile black hen and held it up to the cheers of the crowd. “We need a volunteer!” he shouted, “You must hold the chicken with both hands, and you rock it back and forth three times! Only three times. Then you must rotate the chicken in three circles, precisely three circles, man.  Now you must blow into the arse of the chicken. Then drop the chicken in the ring!”

 The rooster and the hen circled around the two numbers 27 and 91 that my son and I had. They paused for several minutes on each as we held our breaths. Suddenly the rooster impulsively mounted the hen to the cheers of the crowd, and after a few moments of triumphantly ruffling his feathers on 91, he walked away, along with the hen, neither having emitted a single drop. A local woman with long dread locks who was often seen dancing wildly in front of the pub, “Rehab: for Failed Addicts” stretched out her arms to shoo them toward her own numbers but in time, to her disappointment, they returned and circled around ours. Two young, drunken male tourists with British accents leaned into the cage – almost falling over – clenching their fists and waving their phones on the eyes of the perplexed chickens until they backed away again, much to our disappointment. Finally, without fanfare, unbeknownst to anyone, in the deep shadows that fell on the enclosure from the swelling crowd the assistant shone his light close to the ground and shouted, “Number ten!”. A young American screamed with his ticket held in the air amongst the cries of disappointment, and murmurs of discontent that there was no sighting of the act. The darkened night was lit up with the many phones waving as several people danced their version of a “chicken dance” for a secondary prize. The announcer dispelled all doubt as to the winner, “It is number 10! I have been doing this for 30 years, man! We have a reputation to uphold! It is the world-famous Chicken Drop! So, if the hen shits in the shadow, it shits in the shadow!”