Chickcharney

The pine forests of Andros stand still in the heat, ranks of Caribbean pine rising out of bare white limestone, their needles hissing whenever the wind turns and comes in off the water. High in two of those trees, where the crowns have been dragged together and lashed into a single fork, something sits and watches with red eyes. It does not blink. Its head rotates, slow and complete, tracking a man who has wandered too far from the settlement, and the man, if he has any sense, is already reaching into his pocket for a scrap of bright cloth.

This is chickcharney country, and the people of Andros learned its rules a long time ago.

The creature stands about three feet tall and looks, at a glance, like an owl that decided to walk upright and never went back. It is feathered all over, though some who claim to have seen it insist on fur. The eyes are red and fixed forward. Each hand carries three clawed fingers, each foot three toes, and a long prehensile tail trails behind it, the sort of tail that can take a grip on a branch while both hands are busy. Most unsettling of all is the head, which turns the full way round on its neck so that the thing can look at what is behind it without troubling to move its body. It nests by binding the tops of two tall pines into one crown, and if you find such a fork in the deep woods you are standing under a chickcharney’s home whether you can see the occupant or not.

Where it came from depends on who is telling it. The plain answer, the one the foresters like, is that the chickcharney is the long memory of a real bird. A barn owl called Tyto pollens once lived on Andros, a heavy, flightless creature that stood as much as three feet high and, like all owls, could swivel its skull to face over its own shoulder. It shared the island with the Lucayan people for centuries before it died out, somewhere around the 1500s, and a forester named Bruce Marcot argued in 1995 that the bird and the legend are the same story told across a gap of time, the animal gone but the shape of it left behind in the woods. A paleontologist who studies fossil owls looked at the dates and the geography and judged the idea sound. The other answer is simpler. The chickcharney is what lives in the pines, it has always lived in the pines, and the bones are beside the point.

Its temperament is the whole of its power. The chickcharney is not a predator in any ordinary sense and does not hunt people for meat. What it does is judge them. A traveler who shows respect, who offers a flower or a piece of bright cloth, who does not mock the creature or damage its trees, walks out of the forest carrying good luck that can last the rest of his life. A traveler who laughs at it, who fouls its territory, who cuts down the pines it has bound together for a nest, walks out cursed, and the curse is patient. This is the bargain, and it is not subtle. Andros mothers warned their children with it, and grown men carried their charms into the woods without embarrassment.

The most famous victim was not a child of the island at all. In the 1890s a young Englishman named Neville Chamberlain, son of the politician Joseph Chamberlain, came out to run a sisal plantation on Andros. He wanted a tree felled to clear a line across his land. The local men refused to touch it, knowing whose tree it was, so Chamberlain brought in a crew from Nassau and had it cut anyway. The plantation failed. He spent six hard years trying to make the agave grow in soil that would not have it, then gave up and went home to England. Decades later, when Britain was at war and that same Chamberlain was Prime Minister and his agreement signed at Munich had collapsed into ruin, an old Androsian who had been present at the cutting was said to have nodded and explained the whole thing. The chickcharneys, he said, had simply taken their time. A wire-service story carried the claim under the headline of chickcharneys at Munich, and the island has never let the connection go.

The creature has weaknesses, but they are weaknesses of nature rather than of combat. It is bound to its forest and its nesting pines, and a chickcharney has no reach beyond the trees and the people foolish enough to wrong it. It can be appeased, which is the same as saying it can be managed by anyone willing to mind their manners. The flowers work. The cloth works. Courtesy works. And the surest defence of all is the dullest one, which is to leave the deep pines and their bound crowns alone and give the thing in the fork nothing to judge you for.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Chickcharney?

The Chickcharney is a legendary creature from the folklore of Andros Island in the Bahamas. It is described as an owl-like being about three feet tall, with red eyes, three fingers on each hand, three toes on each foot, a long prehensile tail, and a head that can turn completely around. It lives in the island’s pine forests and either blesses or curses the people who enter its territory.

Where does the Chickcharney live?

The Chickcharney lives in the interior pine forests of Andros, the largest island in the Bahamas. It builds its nest by binding the tops of two tall Caribbean pines together into a single fork, so a tree with a joined crown is taken as a sign of a Chickcharney’s home.

Is the Chickcharney good or evil?

The Chickcharney is neither purely good nor purely evil; it responds to how it is treated. A person who shows respect, often by offering bright flowers or coloured cloth, is rewarded with good luck for the rest of their life, while anyone who mocks it or harms its nesting trees is left with a lasting curse.

Is the Chickcharney based on a real animal?

Many researchers believe the Chickcharney legend preserves the memory of Tyto pollens, a large flightless barn owl that once lived on Andros and stood up to three feet tall. The owl shared the island with the Lucayan people and went extinct around the 1500s, and a 1995 United States Forest Service paper argued that this bird inspired the myth.

What is the Chickcharney curse of Neville Chamberlain?

According to Bahamian legend, the future British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain angered the Chickcharneys in the 1890s by cutting down one of their trees while running a sisal plantation on Andros. The plantation failed, and islanders later linked the collapse of his Munich Agreement to the curse he was said to have brought on himself.

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