Tu B’Shvat & Close Encounters Of The Florida Kind…Redux
by Gerald A. Honigman
This coming February 9th is a very special day for our family.
Our “baby,” Elana Judiith (Yehudit ), named for my father, Edward (Yehudah–Judah), of blessed memory, turns twenty-seven, G_d bless, and that evening on the (mostly) lunar Hebrew calendar this year is the eve of the Hebrew Bible’s (aka, “Old Testament”) holiday of Tu B’Shvat, a celebration of G_d’s love for the natural world for which humans are expected to be good caretakers.
The Bible, for example, is filled with instructions about how humans are expected to relate not only with each other, but also to Planet Earth’s other inhabitants–from not taking fruit from trees until they’re at least three years old so that they may strengthen and propagate beforehand, to treating creatures humanely and allowing working animals to also rest on the Sabbath. The laws of Kashruth, including slaughter of food animals, were designed with such things in mind as well, and mankind was expected to use wisdom in dealing with Earth’s resources–conservation…And so much more.
I taught these subjects and tried to convey these values to over a thousand students and families for decades and had them actively involved in various wildlife/conservation projects, causes, and issues. But that’s another very long story, so I’ll leave that for perhaps another time. My wetlands ecology field trips; forest protection, sustainable harvesting and pollution involvements; sea turtle nest and beach conservation excursions; and so forth were written up in newspapers, with commendations coming in on both national, state, and local levels.
With the above in mind, the impetus for this resurrected tale in honor of this year’s Tu B’Shvat and Elana’ birthday came about quite some time ago courtesy of the United States Postal Service…well, sort of. Let me explain…
With an extensive background in science in additional to Middle Eastern Studies, I’ve come to know my home state of Florida’s fauna reasonably well since moving here in 1985.
When we built our home several stone throws away from the ocean, we tried to cause the least disruption possible, leaving much of our property in its natural state. As a result, we’ve been blessed with threatened Scrub Jays, Gopher Tortoises, Painted and Indigo Buntings, Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnakes, beautiful light blue land crabs, wrens, and so forth visiting us–as well as the usual raccoons, anole lizards, tree frogs, black racers, toads, skinks, box turtles, cardinals, blue jays, opossums, and so forth…all on just about a third of an acre of land. Ospreys, bald eagles, deer, wild pigs, and coyotes have been in the neighborhood as well.
But the critter which prompted the first version of this essay many years ago was something all-too-common for this neck of the woods…er, scrub habitat.
As I pulled up to my mailbox after a workout at the gym, I reached out of the car window and grabbed the lip of the mailbox door to open it. I then felt something fuzzy from below and realized I had put my fingers into a shallow web built under the lip.
Uh oh…
After I retrieved the mail, I next prodded the very shallow lip where my fingers had just visited with a stick.
Sure enough, in all of her glory, one of the biggest black widow spiders, showing off a glistening red hourglass on her abdomen, fell onto the ground.
Over the years, I’ve seen numerous brown and black widows on my property. I suspect I have red ones in the palmetto as well. Often, their golden, round egg sacks can be spotted under outdoor furniture, under shelving in garages, and so forth. The round ones with spikes are brown widow sacks; the non-spiked ones are the black widow’s future babies. I’ve known for years to be careful about where to place my hands–yet, we all get lax at times.
I got lucky. Momma Widow–like most widows–wasn’t really aggressive towards people, and I avoided getting injected with a powerful neurotoxin venom reported to be 15 times stronger than a rattlesnake’s. Having some fairly serious medical conditions, I’d be at considerable risk if bitten.
While the widow family is widespread, Florida seems to be prime territory (as it is for exotic invasive species such as Nile Monitor Lizards, Burmese Pythons, Brazilian Pepper Trees which have killed most of my native Scrub Oaks, Iguanas, Lion Fish, and so forth)–and my property, in particular. We have numerous other varieties of arachnids here as well. My children, G_d bless, say that the movie Arachnophobia could have been filmed inside my house and on the rest of my property.
This USPS widow experience got me thinking about all the other close encounters of the Florida kind I’ve had over the years.
There was the time, for example, while wading through San Carlos Bay near Sanibel, searching for mollusk specimens like Rose Petal Tellins, Pear Whelks, Horse and Fighting Conches, and Apple Murexes, that I finally took my eyes away from the underwater formations and looked upwards–and right into the eyes, not more than four feet away, of an osprey curiously watching my every move from a tree stump along the water’s edge. Its nest was in the tree above. It was making sure that I was one of the good guys.
And then there was the time in the Florida Keys, while wading off of Sombrero Beach on Marathon, that when I turned around I came face to face with a five foot long barracuda, loaded with daggers for teeth, staring at me with cold, steely eyes. The list goes on…
But, since I began this part of the essay by discussing events on my own property, let’s continue from there.
When my three of four oldest kids were young, I had always warned about staying away from the adjacent undeveloped lots with their palmetto thickets.
In one especially hot September, I picked them up from school and walked to the side of the house–about twelve feet from the outside wall–to water the beautiful yellow alamanda flowers. They sat right next to some of my own palmetto under a scrub oak tree.
I had filled a bucket, was tired and hot, and proceeded to slowly spread out the water to the roots.
All of a sudden, there was a loud swishing noise–as if my lawn sprinkler system had gone off. But, it hadn’t.
Now, keep in mind that I’m a dedicated fisherman since almost my days in diapers, and hate fishermen who tell tall tales. They give us all a bad name. Having said that, let’s continue…
I bent down next to the alamanda and looked under the palmetto fronds–which I had told the children to be careful about. I soon found out what the source of that noise was…
Uh oh… take two.
I had just doused an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake (America’s largest poisonous reptile) which, when coiled, was as thick as my thigh…that probably made it at least 7 feet long. I called the kids over to see what I had been talking about, keeping them a safe distance in back of me. Like the others, there’s much more to this story as well, but for the sake of space, let’s move on to the next chapter.
Soon after moving here, I met a (relatively speaking), “real” Floridian. On one of our fishing trips, both Harry and I were standing right next to the water’s edge, near the bumpers of a small wooden bridge on Bulow Creek from where I had earlier hooked a nice snook in the pouring rain.
All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, Albert rose to the surface within petting distance.
Albert was the 11 to 12 foot ‘gator who routinely raided the crab traps in the area. Again, I don’t tell fish tales regarding size and such. Some idiot months earlier had coaxed Albert to come entirely out of the water with a piece of chicken in order to take his picture–so I know Albert’s size (and I’m a very good estimator…have checked myself many times).
Harry and I both aged a few years that day…
As the proud “father” of Contessa and Maximus–my precious Chocolate and Yellow Labrador Retrievers–my latest ‘gator tale hit too close to home.
Another man took his own Lab out for a swim just up the road from us a bit earlier. Unfortunately, he wound up making front page news when a large ‘gator got his beloved dog. It’s easy to blame the man for his ignorance…after all, this is Florida. Yet, he was a newcomer and said he just didn’t know…You just can’t be too careful.
And there was the time when my canoe tipped over in the Ocklawaha River–right after I’d spotted a 9-footer sunning himself on the bank. On that same weeklong wetlands studies excursion with other colleagues, we discovered a coral snake with its head crushed outside the ladies cabin one morning. Someone had inadvertently stepped on it and crushed its small skull the night before coming back from the campfire. Coral snakes, while shy creatures, are cousins to deadly cobras.
Widows, Eastern Diamondbacks, ‘gators…
Moving on…
The old Ormond fishing pier got nailed by a nor’easter right before I moved here in ‘85. Its posts, however, still attracted assorted creatures which in turn brought in target fish species.
It was a low energy summer day. The ocean was as flat as an ice-skating rink. I hit the water real early to avoid the heat later in the day.
I waded chest deep into the Atlantic to cast my line towards the pilings. Structure holds fish.
I was connecting nicely, reeling fish in from the area of the posts. I was probably about 60 or 70 feet from the shore.
Then it happened…I got hit solidly from behind and went flying forward into the water.
I got up, looked around–half expecting to see a kid’s runaway surfboard as my attacker.
But there was no surfboard, no surfers, no one else in sight…just me, myself, and I on a very earlier summer morning.
Now, again, as someone who is very interested in biology–especially the marine type–I knew what was going on. I knew…but didn’t want to know. I was catching fish. And I wasn’t about to leave.
Like a total fool, I retrieved my rod, shook the water out from my reel–and then went back into the water…How do you spell “idiot?”
Yep, I soon got wacked once again from behind–but this time I was praying to High Heaven and promised I’d never be so dumb again–well, at least not in the near future.
Remember the scene from that amazing Spielberg movie, Jaws, when folks on shore kept on telling the guy swimming from the collapsed pier not to look back but to keep on coming quickly to shore?
Well, as I got up this second time from the water and turned towards the beach, I noticed a young boy and what must have been his grandmother frantically waving at me from the condo balcony from above. They were screaming, “get out…don’t you see the fins swimming in and around the pilings?”
No, I didn’t…I was focused on my fishing and they had a better view from above of the whole situation. On other occasions, I had indeed spotted such fins–but not this time. And besides, fishing does things to me…
As with the black widow, I had lucked out again.
The water was clear, and these were big–but primarily fish-eating–sharks. These weren’t West Coast, seal-devouring Great Whites (yet my county in Florida, Volusia, is known as the shark attack capital of the world.
The ramming I had experienced was shark behavior which often occurs as a prelude to attack. And while Great Whites are not common here, assorted species such as various Tigers, Hammerheads, and Bulls are–and none of those are to be disrespected either.
A bit later, in somewhat shallower water, I got zapped in that same general Ormond Pier area across my back and legs by a Portuguese Man O’ War. It felt like being hit with an electric cattle prod.
And a few years after that, a few miles north, I aged another several years when I turned around while in the water and found that a ten-foot long manatee had silently crept up from behind to examine me. I have seen many of these amazing creatures in the estuaries near my house, but this was my first encounter–again within easy petting distance–in the ocean. Keep in mind that I was still shaky from my earlier shark adventure. So, imagine what was thus going through my mind during those first seconds when I sensed that something was behind me.
Finally, before ending this Florida safari in honor of Tu B’Shvat and Elana, there’s just one last story I’d like to relive with you.
I had usually headed to points south from our home in north central Florida on my various eco-excursions, taking my children (of course) along with me and my wife. They were raised with a love for G_d’s natural world around them too…
Having heard of loop currents which brought Caribbean mollusk specimens into the Panhandle, I decided about thirty years ago to explore there instead. So, off to the Apalachicola Bay area we went…
I found the National Estuarine Sanctuary office and made some contacts. Before long, I was brought into the back area and shown the very specimens I had hoped to find on my own…beautiful Queen Helmet shells, and so forth. It turned out, however, that to really try to get to these, you had to go to the outlying islands–and then have the time to explore–which I didn’t have.
Later, we visited St. Joseph’s Bay–truly an amazing experience. The water is among the clearest you will find anywhere. On one side of the road sits the Gulf beach with its (then) 50-ft. high sand dunes, and on the other side of the road sits the bay.
I went wading while my wife played with our now three older children on the shore. I found many beautiful specimens, but no new ones that I had not encountered before. But then it happened…
A pure, bright orange True Tulip http://www.seashells.org/truetulip.htm is considered a fairly rare find. Indeed, of the numerous Tulip mollusks I’d discovered over the years, no intact orange specimens were among them.
The day was coming to an end, and the mosquitoes were getting ready to feast. My wife was calling to me to come back on shore. And as I turned back around, the most beautiful orange True Tulip shell was in front of me in the clear water.
Bingo !
Unfortunately, however, as I picked it up, its new occupant–not the original mollusk which made the shell–came out to greet me.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for the hermit crab in his symbiotic, commensalism relationship–but just wished that I had come across an empty shell instead. It would have been a consolation prize, of sorts, for not getting a shot at those loop current Caribbean specimens that I had really come to the Panhandle for.
So picture this…
There I was, in St. Joseph’s Bay, with my wife calling to me to hasten my exit, and I was busy talking to a hermit crab trying to convince him or her to trade me for the empty beautiful brown True Tulip shell I had found earlier. And for a while, it looked like success was within reach. He (she?) actually came out a good ways and was exploring the new shell I was displaying with his claws. But my wife was getting more impatient, the mosquitoes were getting more hungry–so I kissed the hermit crab goodbye, wished him or her a good life, thanked G_d for His marvelous creations, and watched a beautiful sunset over the Gulf of Mexico soon afterwards.
I never did find another orange True Tulip again in such vivid color and condition. The fault is largely my own, however–on all counts. Perhaps I just need to stop writing and get out there more.
Especially after storms hit Florida, Sanibel Island is still rated as one of the top shelling beaches in the world. Take a look at what washes ashore:
http://www.iloveshelling.com/blog/category/tulip/true-tulip-tulip/
So, until next time, particularly for those folks who care and are awed by Nature, plan you own amazing Florida excursion…
But try to avoid the young male black bears being chased out of the Ocala National Forest by the older boys. I almost hit one crossing the road just a few miles from my house not long ago, and several have visited the college Spring Breakers near the beach.