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| "Release, Panel 1" |
A wood stork went
fishing in the pond behind my villa. She waded out only a few inches, her
gangly legs stilt-like above the surface of the water.
Thinking her
fishing expedition would require time and patience, I turned away; but a flash
of white from the corner of my eye brought me back to the window. Sure enough,
the wood stork flew in my direction across the water, over the golf course and
into my backyard.
The fish in
her bill was a large sunfish; a prize catch. She held onto the squirming fish,
struggling to get it down. With each swallow, her throat expanded. I worried
that she'd bitten off more than she could chew. Like a mother hen, I fretted
that she would choke or worse yet, die from over consumption.
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| "Wood Stork Reverie" |
I must admit,
I can relate. My own eyes are sometimes bigger than my stomach, and I often dish
up more than I can eat. Humans are not alone in this. Seagulls have been
known to stuff themselves so full they must regurgitate. But when they’re done,
they go back for seconds and thirds.
A Burmese
python running loose in the Everglades tried to swallow an alligator. The
python’s eyes were bigger than her stomach; and to make matters worse, the
alligator was prickly going down. The bite, the python’s last, proved fatal.
The snake's lusty appetite was too much of a good thing. She literally exploded
before her feast was over. Forgive me if I'm glad.
Once an
endangered species, alligators are battling for their lives again. The indirect
cause is man. Burmese python's brought to Florida from Southeast Asia as pets
are the alligator’s number one problem. What would you do with a pet that has
grown from one foot to almost 20 in a just few short years? Not wanting to
euthanize a favorite pet, owners are releasing them into the wild. Not a good
idea!
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| "Release, Panel II" |
What happens
when a 15 to 20 foot snake is set free in a lush tropical climate? They find
others of their kind and multiply. Hungry Burmese pythons are devouring the
food that indigenous reptiles and animals need for survival. They are eating
already endangered species like mangrove fox squirrels and the endearing wood
storks. They are competing for food with other threatened species like the
eastern indigo snake and, of course, the alligators. But isn't there enough food
to share? Not by a long shot.
The pythons
are foreigners to Florida; they have no natural predators. They literally breed
and feed unhampered by any natural enemies. That is until the Florida Fish and
Wildlife department stepped in and declared open season on their removal. Each
year, a special hunt is held to rid the everglades of these unwanted snakes.
Anaconda, another encroaching pest, is included in this special shoot out.
Hunters from
all over the world, eager to use their snake hunting skills participate. Once
the snakes are caught, they will be killed either by machete or shot gun. If
this makes you squeamish, consider this: the U.S. population imported
approximately 144,000 Burmese pythons over the last five years. The hunts kill
represents only a drop in the bucket.
I'm cheering
for the hunters on this one, and hoping that the Burmese python has taken its
last bite out of Florida's fragile ecosystem.
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| "Hey, Coconut Mon" mixed media on canvas |
