By Andrea Clark Mason, AIRIE
“‘If a baby rattler gets inside your house, just sweep it out with a broom,’ Alan, the head of Pine Island Interpretation tells me. I am neighbors with the deadly coral snake, who likes to sunbathe under blue skies. If I’m bitten, no trip to the hospital will help. I’ll be a goner. For this month, I’ll also be sharing my backyard with several species of lizard and butterfly, and more mosquitoes than anyone would want. When I talked to Alan, over the phone, and told him June was the first month I had available to come to Everglades National Park to do some research as a writer/artist-in-residence, he said, ‘Are you sure you want to come in June?’
‘Why? Is it that bad?’ I replied.
Later, after I’d already arrived, right after he’d told me about the rattlers and the coral snake, he said, ‘You’re brave to come in June,’ handing me a bag of naturalist books and a hooded bug jacket, complete with face mask.
I’ve come here to spend time in a land where my family lived for a year – Miami, Florida, and the National Park that spreads out to the west of it. I decided I needed to visit places I mention in the amorphous two hundred page manuscript that has piled high on my desk over the last year. I decided before I could write more, I needed to know what it was like to walk on the hard limestone crust covered with grass that Floridians call a lawn. I needed to understand a deep love for air conditioning. I decided I need to revisit nearby Fairchild Gardens, Parrot Jungle, eat tart key lime pie, and fall in love with a heartbreakingly beautiful ecosystem that might be damaged beyond repair.
The third day, I am half expecting to find a baby rattler or perhaps a coral snake, but instead, I hear a quick tapping on the wall of the bathroom. I look up. Eight legs. A leaf-green spider as big as my hand. I go into the living room and come back armed with a stiff folder and a large piece of Tupperware, which don’t seem like likely tools, but they’re the best I can find. Although I am fast, this spider is faster. Here, there, and all over the bathroom in a few seconds flat. I put down the envelope and Tupperware, resigned to try again later. I take a shower, aware that the spider might be thirsty. I towel off. The spider has not moved. Later on that night, after another stiff envelope and Tupperware incident, I resolve that I will probably never catch the spider. It’s too large to smush, even if I could catch it. It seems more mammalian than arachnid. If I smush it, there will be blood and tissue, guts, like a mouse. Not at all like a spider.
Outside, the humidity fills my mouth like a wet rag. Outside, I sweat as a matter of course. The lightweight, long-sleeved shirt and pants I wear like a uniform don’t shield me from the bugs after the fabric, soaked with sweat, sticks to my skin, despite my whole-body spray of deep woods OFF. (Click the link Gladeswoman to read the full article.)
(Via Knight Arts.)