No strange creature destroying banana plants - Expert blames cats and dogs, farmer thinks differently

Even as residents believe that a 'mysterious beast' was behind last Wednesday's destruction of banana plants in the yard of a female farmer in Lawrence Tavern, St Andrew, Oral Lewis, the head of the extension services at the Banana Board Jamaica, believes that cats and dogs are responsible.

"What happen is really a case we term as 'puss and dog', meaning that when the cats are trying to basically escape the grasp of the dogs, they run up the banana tree, and the dogs will ravage that plant until they get the cat, and sometimes they move from one plant to the other," explained Lewis. "When one plant is ravaged to the point that it falls, the cat will jump to the other tree."

Last Wednesday, Mavis Edwards and her family woke up to find multiple banana plants in their backyard clawed, and since they could not determine the cause, they assumed it was a beast, as they had heard their dog barking for a protracted period during the night. Edwards is not buying Lewis' theory though.

"Cat and dog cah duh that. The tree dem destroyed come way down to the root. So I don't think it was a cat. Cat cannot do that. No," she said.

The occurrence in Lawrence Tavern mirrored a similar one in Cambridge district, Portland, in 2014, when farmers reported the destruction of their banana plants. They also attributed the damage to a mystery beast, which they said damaged the plants but not the fruits. However, Lewis, who has been in the banana industry for more than three decades, told THE STAR that farmers have nothing to worry about because there is no mysterious creature destroying the herbivorous plants.

"We have seen it (before) so we have had good evidence to tell us that's the case...evidence like someone would have seen that in action," said Lewis. "It's rarely in action, rarely you'll see it because it may happen at night. But it can happen in the day as well, so someone would have seen it and we have confirmed it."

"The banana plant is fairly soft, and the claws of the dogs are very sharp so it can do great damages. So it's not difficult for that to happen," said Lewis. He went on to explain that in both the Lawrence Tavern and Cambridge cases, farmers or persons nearby heard dogs barking loudly in early hours, which fits into the narrative of a cat, or cats being chased.

But Edwards, whose story was first told in THE WEEKEND STAR, is sticking to what she believes. She told the news team that she believes the culprit is a tree climber.

"A long time my brother tell me that him see a young monkey jumping from limb to limb down by the gully beside him and my son, him come in late from work and him seh him see a monkey inna the yard, that's my yard," she said. "Suh maybe is a monkey because that monkey supposed to big now."