When Don Anselmo, our storyteller, saw the giant deer with the trees growing on its back, he immediately remembered that earlier that year he had shot a deer with palms seeds as pellets. Amazed at this strange occurrence, he thought of catching the animal alive so that his friends would believe his story. On second thought he had the idea of catching the beast with a lasso and raising it in his backyard so that he could later cut the palmetto sticks and leaves for house repairs.
“However, I instantaneously realized that it was a far-fetched idea,” said don Anselmo, “so I decided to shoot before I lost the game. I quickly placed a cartridge in the barrel of my 16-gauge shotgun, nervously raised my gun, took a quick aim and fired. The impact of the shot knocked me down flat on my a*@ but due to my anxiety and happiness I instantaneously jumped right up on my feet. The animal jumped ten feet in the air and fell to the ground bleeding profusely at the neck and mouth.”
“When I arrived at the spot of the “crime”, he was gasping for air and stretching out its legs only to remain motionless forever. Now I decided to process the meat for I knew it was too heavy to back and too large to haul to the beach. When I opened up the animal, I noticed that all the meat on its back and sirloin area was unsuitable for eating because of the many roots of the palms that had taken root on its flesh. Fortunately the arms and legs were clean of roots-just pure, fresh, red, lean meat.”
Don Anselmo processed the body parts and filled eight sacks with meat, enough to make two trips by wheelbarrow to the beach. Once at home he gave large portions of meat to his relatives, neighbors and friends. Most of the meat was corned (preserved with salt) and the folks ate it for about two weeks. It was like Christmas in San Pedro- no fish for two weeks, only smoked deer meat, venison barbecue, venison soup, and fried meat morning and evening. Don Anselmo assured everyone that never before had he seen such a huge deer and never had he had such an incident where palms actually grew on an animal’s back. This happened ONLY in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye and ONLY twenty five years ago, and ONLY to don Anselmo Marin, San Pedro’s greatest storyteller!
– by Angel Nuñez, Columnist
