Florida and Fauna

My old friend Ed Henderson, who travels to enviable places as a matter of course, pays closer attention to wild animals on his journeys than I do. In his letters to me he details seeking out whales or bears or other exotic species. He’s spent a lot of time in Alaska, which must make those observations easier, but even so it’s also a matter of temperament. I’m more inclined to seek out the works of man. If I spot an interesting wild animal somewhere or other, I pay attention, but with certain exceptions—like in Australia—animal-spotting isn’t something I pursue.

We didn’t even make it to the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa this trip, though we considered it, and I would have substituted it without hesitation for Disney World, had Lilly somehow forgotten about the Magic Kingdom. But I did spot a few animals in Florida I’ve never seen wild, at unexpected moments.

Our hotel had an ad slogan probably unique in the hospitality business: “So close, the parrots escape to our trees.” If you check the hotel web site or its stationery, you’ll see that the phrase is a registered trademark, lest the Comfort Inn down the street steal it, I guess. They’re referring to the Busch Gardens’ parrots, and when you read something like that, you naturally look around for parrots when you’re out at the pool or fetching ice. I didn’t see any parrots in their trees last week, but there were pigeons. Slightly different featherage than Yankee pigeons, but they bobbed their heads the same.

On the second-to-last day of the trip, we visited Clearwater Beach just as the sun was arcing down toward the Gulf, and found a spot to park ourselves in the sand. I went back to the car to get some things, to a parking lot between the beach and the town’s main seaside drag. As I closed the trunk, I looked up and saw three parrots sitting on a telephone wire, their plumage as green-yellow-red-colorful as I’d ever seen.

At the Kennedy Space Center, one of the guides on the bus ride between parts of the facility made a point of emphasizing how much of the area was actually given over to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. He pointed out an alligator in a roadside gully, just as the guide did when I was there in 2000. But he also had the driver slow down a little and focused our attention on a large tree among several not more than 100 yards or so from the road.

“There was an eagle in that tree a little while ago,” he said. Sure enough, he was still there, perched near an enormous-looking eagle’s nest. The eagle was mostly in shadow, but the outline was unmistakable. That was definitely a first. I’d never seen an eagle in the wild before. Ed’s probably seen dozens, but I don’t make it to eagle country much, though that apparently includes Florida.

Most of my close encounters with wildlife involve critters smaller than eagles, but who can hone in on their prey with just as much skill. Insects, that is. I think we arrived ahead of the Florida mosquito hordes, but since we didn’t go anywhere really rural, we might avoided them that way (I had my eye on Myakka River State Park, but it didn’t happen).

I did notice some ants in the hotel room. Nothing alarming. In fact, they were the smallest ants I’ve ever seen, just barely recognizable as such, visible from a seated position in the bathroom. Each time I found myself in that position, I noticed them: two or three millimeter-sized black specks making their way along the floor next to the wall.

If there had been dozens or more, that would have been an issue with the hotel. But two or three made me wonder what they were doing there so consistently, and what they found for food in the vicinity, since I’m sure ants don’t do anything else outside their nest other than look for food. After a while, the obvious occurred to me: in ant terms, the people who occupy the rooms probably exude a nice supply of biomass, mostly invisible to us, but which might be useful to tiny ants. I don’t know if that’s true, but it certainly gave me something to meditate about in the privy.