The Everglades Want to Kill You

Not wanting to wait until I found myself in the closing jaws of an alligator or eating what I thought was lettuce but turned out to be one of the many poisonous Everglades plants, I decided to do some much needed research. I made this decision in Key West, however, the day before we were to plunge into the wilds of the Everglades to set up camp. This limited my research options.

I only found one book in Key West about the Everglades. Fortunately, it contained the information I was looking for. I quickly learned that the Everglades could kill you 50 different ways the moment you step out of your car.

To start, there are water moccasins, copper heads, and two kinds of rattlesnakes, and perhaps various species of constrictors and pythons that have escaped into the wild. As long as you don’t sneak up on them, or go swimming with them, or insult them in some way, the snakes will leave you alone. But it is not uncommon for a visitor to be attacked by more than one snake at time in the Everglades, even more than one species of snakes. Or so I imagined. Because one has little to do in Key West when sitting on the beach drinking Red Stripe after Red Stripe while reading about the Everglades, except contemplate all the forms in which death could visit you there.

I also learned that the Everglades is home to Florida panthers. Seeing as how they haven’t won a Stanley Cup in a while and are forced to live in a swamp, I knew to be wary of them. But I figured they’d be rather unwieldy trying to negotiate through mangroves and quicksand on ice skates (even if there are hockey skates). How silly I felt (and tipsy) when I continued my reading and found that these “panthers” are actually rather large carnivorous cats. To add to the confusion, the book compared them to other “mountain lions” around the U.S., like the “Nittany Lions” of Pennsylvania (or the “Panthers” of Pitt).

Thoroughly confused (and more than a little worried), I then learned about, what else, alligators. I understand the issue with alligators. I had no intention of poking any with a stick or thrashing about woundedly in the water. But what I didn’t know is that there are also crocodiles in Florida. I’m not sure if I can tell the difference between a gator and a croc, but I hoped this confusion wouldn’t lead to some sort of reptilian meal-related mishap, for I figured with my luck, I’d be staring at the open mouth of one of these animals (after having jumped into the water in a frantic attempt to escape a pack of snakes (or hockey players)), trying to determine if it were a crocodile or alligator (I think you count their teeth, or make a bag out of them and see how it wears, or something), when the other kind would sneak up behind me and CHOMP, there would go my glove hand.

Compared to the various animals who want to kill you, there are also any number of poisonous plants. In particular, there is a tree called the Poisonwood. The book provided helpful pictures. The problem was I was drunk, so the picture of the Poisonwood tree looked to me like a picture of an Oak tree. Or a maple tree. Or any tree, really. (On a side note, the picture didn’t improve the next day during my hang-over.) Since we would be camping, I was worried about inadvertently using poisonwood for the camp fire. I imagine that breathing the smoke of a burning poisonwood log would be rather irritating. It might make your lungs itchy, necessitating all sort of inventiveness and contortions as you make a desperate yet vain attempt to scratch your lungs.

The Everglades are full of other comparatively minor nuisances, such as thick swarms of mosquitoes (unbearable at some times of the year, the book said; oh, and Deet doesn’t work), biting flies, wasps, hornets, bees, buzzards, gulls, jelly fish, and any number of allergens at all times of the year. As we drove east on the Overseas Highway, I began to question why we were going to camp in the Everglades. Then I remembered: it's beautiful. And it was! (Pictures still forthcoming.)

I’m Glad to be Back from Sunny Florida

Landing at National after 9 days in the warm Florida sunshine, despite the snow and shivering cheery blossoms, I was glad to be home. The gray skies and biting wind did nothing to dampen my feelings.

My life in DC is so much better than any life I could imagine in south Florida, for one simple reason: cars. Yesterday, this article in the Washington Post confirmed what I learned from years of commuting to Tyson’s Corner, a time in my life that is happily behind me. In the Miami area, it is just about impossible to live without a car.

This means, to me at least, that the cities of south Florida can’t compete with DC when it comes to quality of life. The best in south Florida are usually situated on the barrier islands. The beach towns, stretching from Miami Beach to Ft. Lauderdale and further north to Palm Beach, are about the best urban spaces in this part of Florida. These places, while fancy, are rather sterile, with little street life to speak of. No one walking to the corner store or the gym or the dry cleaners. No one walking to the local bar or restaurant. You drive to these places. At night, certain blocks come alive, but these rest of the streets are dead save for buzzing traffic. Most people who actually live in these beach towns, reside in cold, absurdly large and fantastically expensive condominium buildings. I’m not sure who they are, but it doesn’t seem they venture outside very often, except when they burst forth from underground parking garages in their bass-thumping SUVs or sports cars.

However, I actually liked these areas much more than I thought I would. South Beach is a veritable outdoor museum of art deco architecture, which is not my favorite. But strung together, building after building, block after block, with palm trees and neon, it was wonderful! There’s a certain amount of life coming and going if you sit still long enough to notice, and of course there’s the beach. But this is probably a function of contrasts: go inland just a few blocks, and you find yourself in no-where land. The southeast side of Florida, from Homestead north to at least Ft. Lauderdale (and probably farther) is one vast sprawling suburb, from the edge of the Everglades to the high rises along the Atlantic. It’s one of the ugliest places I’ve ever seen in my life. And I grew up in the rust belt.

What makes Florida so bad is the lack of choice. If you have lots of money, you have more choices (same as anywhere else, I suppose). You can buy a condo in Miami Beach and walk somewhere, if you can find somewhere you want to walk to. But if you are a regular person, you’ll probably end up living in a place that you must use a car to get anywhere. You have no real choice. Everything is the same. In most neighborhoods in DC, where lots of regular people (like me) live, from the Hill to Columbia Heights to Georgetown, you can go weeks, months, even years, without ever driving a car unless you choose to. To me, there is an indirect correlation between time spent behind the wheel and quality of life. The less time driving, the better my life.

So now I’m back in my little corner of DC, stopping at my wine store on the way home from work, having a coffee on the side walk, watching regular people do mundane errands, and I’m happy. Despite the strange weather, I’m glad to be out of Sunny Florida.

Living on Sponge Cake

My wife and I just returned from a trip to south Florida. Before we went, I had decided that I didn’t like south Florida, or Florida in general. I don’t know why I made that decision. (Actually, I do know why: because there are alligators there; but that sounds rather snobbish, so I didn’t want to bring it up here.) After spending a week and half there, I’ve come to the hard thought out decision that I don’t mind southern Florida. “Don’t mind” falls somewhere in the middle of my “Place Likeability Scale” or “PLS”. My PLS goes from “utter loathing” all the way to “I wouldn’t mind dying there.” Specific parts of south Florida tend toward “pretty darn cool” (which is 2 clicks below “I wouldn’t mind dying there” on the PLS), while other parts of the state come very close to “get me out of here!” (only a notch away from “utter loathing”).

Pictures are forthcoming, although none of them show me being eaten by an alligator. Which is kind of disappointing, in a certain sense, because THAT would make a great blog entry. The logistics of such an entry are rather difficult to imagine, but my journal entry below gives a flavor of what such an entry might be like:

“Key West, Friday, March 29.

"The island is over-run with chickens. They tell me they are of the “feral” variety, which I can only assume means “soft and cuddly”, because they look so fluffy and friendly.

"One particularly jaunty fellow is approaching me now as I sip my mimosa on this quaint porch. How amazing, he’s coming right up to me. What beautifully colors! What amazing plumes! Hi little fellow! I don’t know if it’s the 4 mimosas or three Red Stripes talking, but I feel quite close to this rooster right now. I think I’ll reach out and give him a little hug.

"Well, I’ve got a hold of him, and I think he likes me, although I’ll know better tomorrow during my hang-over when I’ll actually be able to tell if his feet are tearing up the skin on my arms as I imagine they must be. The claws look sharp enough to shred paper!

"Oh, look! Now he’s pecking my head. That, I can feel a bit. He’s moving down my forehead toward my eye. Boy, now that hurts! That hurts a LOT! I should probably throw him away from me, or at least leave off writing in this damnable journal for a moment in order to grasp him more firmly with BOTH hands. I’ll soon have to stop writing anyway, since he’s moving on to my other eye, and I’ll soon be blind. But no matter, because, as they say in Key West….OWW! klahtygiroqjkhfjbtyu5oheqvjrkqjvkbtroguifejhgj….”

I’m sure an entry about being eaten by an alligator would be at least twice as exciting, and probably have a better back-story. But we’ll have to settle for a feral cock. And he was, too.