Obeah at Elysees?

THE GOOD folk of Champs Elysees have suddenly been presented with an upsetting mystery; let's call it the Case of the Headless Cocks. Over the last four days the carcasses of cocks with their heads lopped off have been appearing at the crossroads of Champs Elysees and Bergerac Road, placed there with almost religious regularity in the wee hours of the morning by a person or persons unknown.

Apparently, residents of this upscale Maraval neighbourhood are not amused by this kind of foul play and have called on their parish priest Fr Garfield Rochard to use his good offices to nip in the bud whatever sinister design the user of these headless cocks may have for their well-secured and burglar-proofed community. Who can really blame them? While cocks without heads may appear to be quite dead and useless to the casual observer, the fact is that the sacrifice of these male birds is a virile part of the ritual of those versed in the practice of obeah, voodoo and the black arts. The well-to-do residents of Champs Elysees, then, are perfectly in order not to take this headless-cock mystery lightly or lying down and have responded with an apt degree of anxiety in engaging Fr Rochard to attack it with full spiritual force. After all, something ominous may be afoot here, especially if the decapitated birds are intended to send a specific and symbolic message to the folks living in the vicinity of this Maraval intersection.

In responding to their calls, Fr Rochard said his parishioners fear that someone is either engaged in some form of obeah or acts of mischief. And while, it seems, they may consider themselves impotent to deal with it, they obviously feel that Fr Rochard, an experienced man of the cloth, will have the spiritual antidote. But who can the culprit be, and what really is his motive? A number of suspects come to mind. We would like to believe that this headless cock mystery is really the work of a cocky practical joker who has decided to provide some comic relief to a society sinking into a state of depression over the rising incidence of violence and murder in the country and is using the headless cocks as symbols of police impotence in dealing with it. In which case we would all want to thank him for the comic distraction, however temporary. Laughter, they say, is the best medicine. Or the culprit may be an amateur researcher who wants to expose the degree of superstition that still exists in TT, even among the affluent and, presumably, more intelligent section of the country's population.

Fr Rochard did not say how many calls he got from his parishioners to deal with the headless cock mystery but clearly they were sufficient and urgent enough for him to go and have a look at the dead birds himself. The parish priest gave no impression that the situation required a spiritual response; significantly however he did indicate that if the headless cocks continue to appear, the matter would be reported to the police. In the meantime, we are told, no one is touching the dead birds, not even the garbage collectors although the stench of their decaying carcasses is rising. But then again, who knows? The culprit may well be a genuine obeah man engaged by someone seeking vengeance against the residents of Champs Elysees or someone living there, following some perceived injury. In which case, the members of this upper class community had better look out. The blood of the headless cocks will do for them.