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May 3, 2012 After spending the night in Homestead, we woke up early and hit the road for the Everglades. After stopping at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center, we saw our first alligators at Royal Palm, Anhinga Trail. We also saw a turtle and lots of birds, including an anhinga of course. On Gumbo Limbo Trail we saw lots of lizards. Next stop was the Pa-hay-okee Overlook. This boardwalk allows for great views of the "River of Grass", and we heard from a guide later that the Overlook is a perfect place to watch the sunset. Right under the overlook we saw a barred owl at very close range. He sat there silently while we took lots of pictures of him and watched him in awe. He was so beautiful and we were so lucky to see him there right in the middle of the day.
From the Flamingo Marina we took a two hour boat tour up the Bottonwood Canal, through Coot Bay and Tarpon Creek to Whitewater Bay. We saw crocodiles, including a baby, a blue heron eat a huge fish, a few osprey, egrets and ibises. After our boat tour, we hiked the Mahogany Hammock
trail and saw a woodpecker. On our way out of the park we saw a whole bunch of vultures eating a big turtle that must have been hit by a car. We stopped to hike Snake Bight Trail but decided against it when a whole bunch of mosquitos attacked us right at the mouth of the trail.
We had a nice Mexican meal at Rosita's Restaurant in Florida City before driving back towards Miami.
May 6, 2012 We drove across the Everglades Parkway, aka Alligator Alley towards Everglades City. On the way we saw a bunch of smoke, which we later heard on the news was caused by a bog fire. Once in Everglades City we watched a beautiful sunset from a little dock we came across before finding a motel. We got attacked by mosquitos as we moved our bags from the car into the motel room.
May 7, 2012 We took another boat tour from Chokoloskee of the Thousand Islands. We saw manatees, dolphins, spoonbills, osprey and a few other birds. The tour guide talked about the Calusa Mound Key (Indian Key), which the Calusas built, probably to escape
mosquitos, but there are a couple other theories as well. Apparently, the Calusa were 7 feet tall, which was part of the reason the Spanish and later Americans had such a hard time conquering them. They'd start a war with them, and then stop and decide to leave them and their territory alone for a brief time before going after them again. It was a very good tour, not only because of all the wildlife we saw, but also for the history lesson.
Next we drove the Tamiami Trail, stopping briefly at H.P. Williams Roadside Park, a good place to see alligators. We saw a turtle too. On the side of the road, just before Shark Valley there was a huge alligator being eaten by vultures. Another car fatality, so sad.
The 2 hour tram tour from Shark Valley was great. We saw lots more alligators and were able to appreciate the landscape a bit more. Halfway through the tram tour we stopped at the Observation Tower, from which we saw some big turtles and a bunch of birds making a ruckus in some trees. Maybe there was a Burmese Python they were all freaking out about. Our
tour guide told a story of how a few months ago him and his driver spotted a Burmese Python, chased it down and captured it! Awesome.
All of our tour guides talked about the scourge of the Burmese Python. It is a huge problem. During the 1980s and 90s, obtaining a Burmese Python via the exotic pet trade was all the rage. It was fun to watch them feed, so some pet owners overfed them. And even those that didn't get overfed grew to such massive sizes the owners, not realizing when they bought them how huge and unmanageable they would become, decided it was a good idea to let the suckers loose in the park. Idiots! Why wouldn't they just kill them? I guess they had no idea just how much damage this invasive species would have on the Everglades ecosystem. There are now an estimated 150,000 Burmese Pythons in the Everglades, and if nothing is done to kill these things they will soon devour all the wildlife in the park. And then there will be no more tourists, just a river of grass filled with 20 foot Burmese Pythons, and who would ever want to go to
such a place? If saving such a precious ecosystem is not important enough to do something drastic, then concern for Florida's economy should be. Would anyone even want to live anywhere near such snake infested place? Hell no. No one will live there, no one will visit there, and the Everglades will be destroyed if there isn't a diverse wildlife creating the balance necessary to sustain such a delicate ecosystem.
In Burma (Myanamar), the Burmese Python was hunted to near extinction because they were valued for their meat and skin to make boots and purses, etc. So, if the Burmese can hunt them to near extinction, then why can't the Americans do a better job of killing these things? Come on! In the last few years, there's been a bounty on them and they've only managed to catch around 500. Another tactic they are using is when they catch a female, they put a chip in her and release her so they can figure out where the mating grounds are. But perhaps what's really necessary is we need the Burmese to teach us how to catch these things - I understand they also have inaccessible mangroves the snakes like
to hide in, so there must be ways of getting at them. Or else let's just pay a bunch of Burmese python hunters to come kill these until they are eradicated, maybe they can bring a few back home to replenish their native habitat. But they don't belong in the Everglades and the thought that several careless pet owners and the exotic pet trade caused such a huge problem makes me very upset. Just one more reason to really crack down on the exotic pet trade, because Burmese Pythons in the Everglades are certainly not the only locale where these "pets" become invasive species wrecking havoc. People shouldn't even be allowed to own non-domestic animals, it's stupid. They belong in the wild, in their native habitat, not in people's homes! You know a Burmese Python ate a human baby? From a crib, because it escaped from it's cage - of course it escaped these things are huge! And that owner, when he saw his snake eating his baby, managed to kill that snake. It was too late for the poor baby of course, but I want all owners of Burmese Pythons who might be reading this to do us all
a big favour: pretend like your precious pet is eating your baby and kill that fucking thing, ok? Otherwise, it will eventually escape and kill a baby Florida Panther one day, and that would be way more sad because there are only 100 Florida Panthers and billions of babies. Fuck! This gives me nightmares.
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