Today, the 125 year old tree died

Tall, graceful, expansive, beautiful and as proud as a creole woman in a green Wob Dwiyet.

That's the mango tree that once stood on Independence Street, Roseau, near the National Cooperative Credit Union building.

For more than ten decades, the mango tree stood guard over the now demolished former home of the world famous author Jean Rhys. (But that's another story).

Yesterday, a man with a long, shiny, noisy chainsaw, standing in the "hand" of the outstretched "arm" of a yellow Komatsu caterpillar, extended high above the street, methodically cutoff limb after limb, branch after branch of the mango tree.

To complete the destruction, this morning the caterpillar wrenched the trunk and the roots and the stones out of the soil.

Jean Rhys's mango tree was dead.