IT IS ON THE ROAD.
It is in their homes. It is on their clothes. It is in their hair. It is in the air. It is everywhere.
This is the plight of the residents at 2nd Avenue, Greens, St George, who have to buckle down every year and withstand the invasion of off-white, fluffy soft cotton.
It may not sound too menacing but the sheer intensity of the onslaught from a more than 25-foot-high silk cotton tree has many people at their wits’ end.
“Every year this happens and the last set has been falling for more than three weeks now. Some children had to leave to go live with relatives,” said Ronald Marcus.
The scene was incredible as cotton literally covered everything with people having to cover their faces to walk the street as every gust of wind sent near blinding tufts of cotton swirling through the air.
Marcus said: “We are eating cotton in our food and drinking it in our drinks.”
Christopher Phillips said they had enquired about getting the tree removed but had met a roadblock.
“The [Barbados] National Trust said the tree was 400 years old so it can’t come down but there are people here who know that tree when it was small. We want this tree down; it want moving.
“We can’t take this every year,” he said, adding the cotton was also affecting crops and livestock.
(CA)
