Originating in the (aptly named) rainforest’s hills, a heavy nighttime downpour sluiced palm fronds, bamboo and other plant life into the sea. In the dawn, coconuts sporting long hairlike fibers rolled in the beach surf break. To your correspondent’s overheated (and musically inclined) imagination, these resembled severed heads.

In turn, this observation led Your Man in the Caribbean to speculate where the tumbling skulls originated. To wit: A vengeful tribe of headhunters with a hankering for headless long pig? Clearly, dear readers, your scribe was spending too many hours under the searing southern sun.

Fortunately, he soon soothed his fevered brow in the brilliant blue and transparent turquoise sea surrounding a blooming offshore reef. Where, masked, snorkeled and finned, he communed with - among other wondrous creatures - a curious cuttlefish.

A marine mollusk from a family including octopus, it shares its cousin’s large, expressive eyes as well as its chameleon-like quality of changing skin hue and texture to match the surrounding seascape.

Hovering just above the seafloor, the cuttlefish’s contemplation met and held your chronicler’s enraptured gaze. While the beast's body’s blushing tones created a mesmerizing visual palette. And, for a time, we shared a peaceful interspecies kinship.

Would that the same were true today among our humankind.