What Else You Got? by Mary Saner

Author:Mary Saner [Saner, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781939632074
Google: o9edvgEACAAJ
Publisher: Head to Wind Publishing
Published: 2018-12-24T05:13:37+00:00

LAKE WALES RIDGE

An article and photograph in an obscure magazine called "Garbage" grabs my attention. It's about an area in central Florida called Lake Wales Ridge. Millions of years ago the ocean covered all of Florida except this long sandy ridge about 10 miles wide and 100 miles long that stretches down the center of the state. On this ancient sand dune is one of the largest concentrations of rare plants in the world.

During a vacation in Florida I take a day and drive inland towards Lake Wales Ridge past cattle ranches and horse farms – a vastly different landscape from the endless strip malls and housing developments near Florida's coast.

I meet up with John Fitzpatrick, who heads the Archbold Biological Station, a research, conservation and education center in the midst of this land known as scrub. He puts a pair of binoculars around his neck, and we set out on a walk through deep sugary sand that is covered with stunted oak trees, cactus and scraggly bushes. There is a stark beauty here on Lake Wales Ridge where we're standing about 130 feet above sea level. (In spots, it's as high as 200 feet above sea level).

Fitzpatrick calls to the birds, specifically the threatened Florida scrub jay. He hands me a peanut and tells me to hold it out between my thumb and finger. Sure enough, a foot-long blue and gray bird flies in and begins pecking at my peanut.

"Ouch!"

Feels like the scrub jay may be getting a little bit of my finger along with the nut. Fitzpatrick isn't feeling any pain. He feeds the jays from both hands. One jay has landed on his head. He's named them all and knows which are the parents and which the offspring. I'm thinking that my grandfather should be here. He loved birds. He used to whistle to them, and they'd whistle back.

"Do they know you or recognize you?" I ask Fitzpatrick.

He smiles.

"It's possible they recognize most frequent visitors, but in fact they treat any human with a peanut as a pretty good friend."

Peanuts are like tasty acorns, which is a major food source here for scrub jays. They get acorns from the scrub oaks.

"Now you take a bulldozer to that scrub where they've buried their acorns for the fall," says Fitzpatrick, "they can't move elsewhere, can't do anything else – other scrub is occupied, acorns are gone. So, what happens? They die a slow starving death looking for shelter and places they don't know. The common myth that you take the habitat away and they go somewhere else is just false. These things have evolved here – have been here a million years."

It is a passionate plea for saving Lake Wales Ridge – one that Fitzpatrick will soon see answered. The following year (1993) Congress designates a portion of Lake Wales Ridge as a National Wildlife Refuge to protect rare plants – the first of its kind in the country.

Postscript

Not only am I fascinated with what I learn from this

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