ANOTHER SENIOR MOMENT
There's Wildlife, And Then There's WILDLIFE!
by Jim Sponseller

Wave the white flag. I surrender. Animals and weeds are taking back the world! Both in my back yard and down in Florida.

After planting vegetable gardens for a large part of my life, decades before beginning my Silver Citizen days, I formally announced last fall that I've had it. Anyone who wanted it could have my little plot of Planet Earth. In recent years it has turned into nothing but a feed lot for deer, rabbits, woodchucks and an army of munching bugs and worms. I should have turned it over to the town fathers as a municipal zoo. Of course I realize that the animals and bugs were here long before us, but there was no need for them to gang up on poor little me.

When retiring some 19 years ago, I figured I'd finally have all the time needed to develop the perfect vegetable garden. Wrong. As nearly every retiree soon finds out, time seems to slip right through one's fingers faster than the days when we were gainfully employed. Who has time to sit out in your garden night and day and shoo away the wildlife? And while you're standing there guarding against the attackers, weeds are shooting up to your knees. Unfortunately, none of these veracious critters have the slightest appetite for weeds. And I despise hoeing them.

As a result, when the growing season came to an end last fall, I threw in the towel. More precisely, I picked up the tools and tossed them in a corner of the garage to await our next yard sale. Starting this summer, our farm-fresh vegetables will be coming from roadside stands and area farmers' markets.

It didn't take more than a few minutes after admitting defeat that I had an offer to take over the plot. You see, my wife Marie is a flower gardening addict. She has been a garden club member for years. She was once its president and still writes a monthly gardening column for its newsletter. Although she probably has a dozen flower gardens scattered around the premises, she didn't bat an eye when I offered my little jungle to her. The patch would fit in perfect with her plans to try out the latest and greatest species of flora and fauna as advertised in the catalogs.

Today, my former so-called vegetable garden is a vision of beauty. Where bug-ridden, wilting tomatoes, beans, squash and other veggies once fought for their lives, there are pretty flowers. No, I don't know their names. All I know is that they are flowers that are white, pink, yellow and blue.

But wait a minute. Did I mention that even in that Holy Grail of Senior Citizen destinations called Florida there are BIG critter problems? For the past three years, I have provided readers a Florida report for those interested in becoming a Snowbird or permanent resident there. I've advised you about the Sunshine State's 1.5 million alligators and several thousand crocodiles, cockroaches, panthers, as well as the crawly little lizard friends and fire ants. But I'm not going to wait until winter to make this next Florida report. As they say on the TV news every night, "We have some BREAKING NEWS!" And here it is.

Six-foot lizards, 20-foot snakes, disease-ridden 20-pound rats, Suckermouth catfish, destructive parrots, spiny-tailed iguanas and frogs that eat frogs. It sounds like a casting call for a Hollywood horror movie. But, according to newspaper reports, they are real and they are happening right there in South Florida!

First, let's talk about the Burmese pythons. A few months ago the whole world gasped at a photo that first appeared in the Miami Herald of a six-foot alligator protruding from the midsection of a 13-foot Burmese python. The python apparently bit off more than it could chew and didn't survive. This happened in the Everglades National Park where last year 95 pythons were captured. Others have shown up in and around Miami. The Burmese pythons can grow as long as 26 feet and weigh 200 pounds. Scientists blame their arrival on owners who purchased the snakes in pet shops and then turn them loose when they become too huge for the owner's comfort.

Meanwhile, Cape Coral, located across the river from where we have spent some winter months in Ft. Myers, has become Florida capital of the Nile monitor lizard. Natives of the Nile River in Africa, the ugly fellows can grow up to seven feet long. Just last month a six-footer was trapped in Cape Coral. It's estimated that at least 1,000 of them make Cape Coral home. There's no record of them attacking humans, but they do have a nasty temper and are ferocious predators of native wildlife. They swim well, climb trees and can jog along at 18 miles per hour. They can still be purchased in area pet stores but are hard to train. One Internet Web site recommends that owners trying to make pets of the Nile monitor "should have a well-stocked first aid kit."

Also among Florida's 400 exotic animal species is the Gambian rat, so far found on only two of the Florida Keys. If they escape the Keys to the mainland they could ravage America's winter vegetable crops and destroy tropical fruits. Weighing nearly 10 pounds, they can carry the potentially fatal monkeypox virus. How about finding one under a head of cabbage in your garden?

Then there are the non-native spiny-tailed iguanas. Gasparilla, one of the tiny barrier islands north of Ft. Myers, is now overrun by the critters, estimated at up to 12,000. That's more than 10 for each year-round resident. Burrowing by, the invasive reptiles threaten the stability of sand dunes needed to hold the shorelines together. They also eat local plants and animals and often take up residence in homes, creating potential health problems.

Costing power companies millions of dollars a year are the South American Quaker parrots. They nest atop power poles and short out transformers. Suckermouth catfish, used in aquariums to clean the tanks, are now growing wild. The foot-long fish burrow into shorelines causing some people's waterfront to collapse. Then there are the Cuban tree frogs, said to be eating native frogs at an alarming rate. "They shovel them down like jelly beans" observed one biologist.

Of course, chances are that if you move to Florida, you may never see some of these newer exotic animals. At least not yet. Just the thought of encountering a hungry Burmese python makes me think that perhaps those cute Michigan Bambi-like deer herds and cuddly bunnies in our gardens aren't so nasty after all.

Jim can be emailed at: sponcom@ameritech.net.