![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tropics -- May be pretty intense
Nov. 16th, 2009 08:58 pmThere are weird aspects to living in the tropics (or sub-tropics to be pedantic). Yeah, the winters are nice and mild, the summers are hot and humid. The hurricanes are rough, but then again, how many natural disasters do you get advertised a week in advance? (I'm looking to you earthquake-prone Pacific, and tornado-torn Midwest).
Many times in the last month or so, I've driven over the intracoastal to our nearest grocery store after I'm done with work, and when I drive back, with the sun in the West lighting up the lagoon, I've seen bottle-nosed dolphin playing in the water. We had one in the canal in our backyard today, the first I've seen in our yard (I often had dolphin in the backyard in St Pete). They don't usually range down the canal (they're everywhere in the intracoastal), but the mullet are running and it's easy food to them. I also saw an 1800 pound (800 kilo) manatee work her way up the canal today, prop scarred in a line along her back. Dolphin and manatee definitely beat the 10' (3m) alligators we had when I was growing up in South Florida, but even alligators are better than, say, the brown bear or wild hogs that invade other yards down here.
The tropics are all about life, even to the struggle of life against death. To go all Latin, it's just so fecund here. Everything, from the plants to the bugs to the animals to the fish are all after any bit of life they can grab. Unlike the North, there is no obvious wax and wane of life, the green summer vs. the dead winter. It's always just plain on here, with every species doing their best to survive and choke out everything else. SciFi fans who have read Harrison's Deathworld would know what I'm talking about -- sometimes I almost want a gun strapped to my wrist just to take out the bayonet palms that jump out and stab me every time I walk by one. I was fishing yesterday, mid-November, and out of some weird coincidence I accidentally trapped a wasp between my pole and my leg (I was in shorts) and the bastard stung the hell out of my inner thigh.
So, I've mentioned before that I have a crab trap. I've caught plenty of blue crab in the canal out back. Earlier this year, when the trap was out of the water on the side of the house, I caught (accidentally) an opossum who squeezed through the crab entrances and got stuck. I called animal control because with the kids, I didn't want to try to get a trapped mammal out of my cage. They assured me that possum tend not to get rabies because their blood is colder than most mammals, but they helpfully removed the marsupial and relocated it farther away.
Yesterday, when fishing, I thought I might throw my trap out again and stopped short when I saw another possum in it, this time pretty far gone.
Part of the reason I enjoy fishing is that I am responsible for the life I eat. I don't fish for trophy billfish, and anything I can't eat enjoyably, I throw back. I consider myself, to some extent, to be the very model of the modern major predator in Florida, with the link into the life-cycle that a predator needs to be. I've had fish die on me that weren't legal to keep, or weren't palatable to humans, and each time, I've felt guilty about it, even as an osprey or pelican would swoop in or a dolphin would surge up to (perhaps) mitigate my karma and take care of the problem.
This dead possum was pretty nasty, though. Tonight is garbage night, so as I dragged the trash cans to the curb, I put on some heavy gloves and tried to remove the possum from my crab trap. It was pretty far gone. Far enough that I ended up throwing out the crab trap, and the gloves I used to try to peel the possum from the trap. I won't go into the details of the removal.
So, I'm a little guilty, and a little annoyed at the loss of life, even of a scavenging, trash eating, cool-blooded marsupial pest. But now, I have to find another crap trap. I just bought a new immersion blender after my last one broke, and I'm in the mood for bisque. The cycle of life goes on here in the tropics.
Many times in the last month or so, I've driven over the intracoastal to our nearest grocery store after I'm done with work, and when I drive back, with the sun in the West lighting up the lagoon, I've seen bottle-nosed dolphin playing in the water. We had one in the canal in our backyard today, the first I've seen in our yard (I often had dolphin in the backyard in St Pete). They don't usually range down the canal (they're everywhere in the intracoastal), but the mullet are running and it's easy food to them. I also saw an 1800 pound (800 kilo) manatee work her way up the canal today, prop scarred in a line along her back. Dolphin and manatee definitely beat the 10' (3m) alligators we had when I was growing up in South Florida, but even alligators are better than, say, the brown bear or wild hogs that invade other yards down here.
The tropics are all about life, even to the struggle of life against death. To go all Latin, it's just so fecund here. Everything, from the plants to the bugs to the animals to the fish are all after any bit of life they can grab. Unlike the North, there is no obvious wax and wane of life, the green summer vs. the dead winter. It's always just plain on here, with every species doing their best to survive and choke out everything else. SciFi fans who have read Harrison's Deathworld would know what I'm talking about -- sometimes I almost want a gun strapped to my wrist just to take out the bayonet palms that jump out and stab me every time I walk by one. I was fishing yesterday, mid-November, and out of some weird coincidence I accidentally trapped a wasp between my pole and my leg (I was in shorts) and the bastard stung the hell out of my inner thigh.
So, I've mentioned before that I have a crab trap. I've caught plenty of blue crab in the canal out back. Earlier this year, when the trap was out of the water on the side of the house, I caught (accidentally) an opossum who squeezed through the crab entrances and got stuck. I called animal control because with the kids, I didn't want to try to get a trapped mammal out of my cage. They assured me that possum tend not to get rabies because their blood is colder than most mammals, but they helpfully removed the marsupial and relocated it farther away.
Yesterday, when fishing, I thought I might throw my trap out again and stopped short when I saw another possum in it, this time pretty far gone.
Part of the reason I enjoy fishing is that I am responsible for the life I eat. I don't fish for trophy billfish, and anything I can't eat enjoyably, I throw back. I consider myself, to some extent, to be the very model of the modern major predator in Florida, with the link into the life-cycle that a predator needs to be. I've had fish die on me that weren't legal to keep, or weren't palatable to humans, and each time, I've felt guilty about it, even as an osprey or pelican would swoop in or a dolphin would surge up to (perhaps) mitigate my karma and take care of the problem.
This dead possum was pretty nasty, though. Tonight is garbage night, so as I dragged the trash cans to the curb, I put on some heavy gloves and tried to remove the possum from my crab trap. It was pretty far gone. Far enough that I ended up throwing out the crab trap, and the gloves I used to try to peel the possum from the trap. I won't go into the details of the removal.
So, I'm a little guilty, and a little annoyed at the loss of life, even of a scavenging, trash eating, cool-blooded marsupial pest. But now, I have to find another crap trap. I just bought a new immersion blender after my last one broke, and I'm in the mood for bisque. The cycle of life goes on here in the tropics.
