Listen to the Mockingbird

Alachua County is a great place for birdwatchers. We're blessed with a varied habitat that includes piney flatwoods, hardwood forests, sandhills, freshwater marshes, farm land and 3 large lakes. At Paynes Prairie, a large savannah just south of Gainesville, 270 species of birds have been recorded. During the fall migration season at least 150 species come to visit and about 100 of them stay for the winter. A smaller migration in the spring brings us more transients and neo-tropicals that stay for the summer to breed. By June the transients have all gone on their ways, while the residents settle down to raise their families.

At Itchy Dog Farm right now we have a lot of birds, but not so many species. We have pileated woodpeckers in our pine trees, hummingbirds and cardinals in the yard, and a red-shouldered hawk keeping an eye on the pasture. Most common by far is the Northern Mockingbird, a year-round resident. In fact, they're so common, we almost don't notice them, despite their beautiful songs. We mostly notice them when we're birding and think we've sighted something interesting and it turns out to be only a mocker, oh well.

But we really shouldn't take them for granted. Mockers have beautiful voices and will sing for hours on end. They are so good at mimicking other birds' songs they can easily confuse a novice birder like me. Their scientific name, Mimus polyglottos, means "many tongued mimic." The male can sing as many as 200 different songs and will continue to learn new ones throughout his life. It stands to reason that the parent in the classic lullaby hopes a mockingbird will sing the baby to sleep:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

Pappa's going to buy you a mockingbird 

Mockingbirds don't just imitate the songs of other bird species, but can pretty much mimic whatever they hear, including the sounds of humans, frogs, dogs, cell phones and even chain saws. A video on YouTube records a mockingbird mimicking a car alarm. In Hopi and Pueblo Indian creation myths, it is Mockingbird who first gave speech to humans.

Unfortunately, if you are a bird it does not behoove you to be too special. Passenger pigeons were plentiful and plump, and we ate them to extinction. Florida herons and egrets were slaughtered by the millions for the plume trade before obtaining federal protection in the early 20th century. Mocker populations were decimated near urban centers because of the Victorian passion for caging songbirds. Of course, those were the days before records and radio, when if you wanted a little music in your life you either had to teach your daughters to play the piano or hang a birdcage in your parlor. And the trend had an upside -- ornithologists believe mockingbird populations in the northwestern U.S., Hawaii and Canada originated from the release of caged birds.

Another distinction of mockers is that they are fearless. Mockingbirds are intensely territorial, and will chase away birds, dogs, cats, and any other living things they perceive as a threat.. It isn't unusual for us to see mockers chasing away crows twice their size, or harassing our resident hawk. Also like crows, they can recognize and remember individual people, and they do hold a grudge. A study at the University of Florida showed the birds could recognize and remember specific humans after only a minute of exposure. It would take way longer than that for me to recognize a particular mockingbird.

Despite the fact that they are found in all U.S. states including Hawaii and Alaska, Northern Mockingbirds are southern birds. They are the state bird of Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, and until 1948, of South Carolina. The proclamation establishing the state bird of Texas declares the mocker "...is a singer of distinctive type, a fighter for the protection of his home, falling if need be, in its defense, like any true Texan". In To Kill a Mockingbird, the quintessential southern novel, the mockingbird is the symbol of innocence. The children are advised they can shoot as many tin cans and as blue jays as they can hit, but never hurt mockingbirds because they only sing and give pleasure to people. The Civil War ballad Listen to the Mockingbird evokes all the pathos of Walter Whitman's poems in far fewer words, as the dead woman's lover mourns the loss of his sweetheart:

Listen to the Mockingbird, listen to the Mockingbird
Oh the Mockingbird is singing oe'er her grave

Eminem's 2005 hit Mockingbird manages to evoke both the innocence of the lullaby and the sad experience of grieving for lost innocence in a single song, not bad for a Missouri boy.

Well, enough of all this. Mockers can't help the emotional baggage we pile upon them any more than they could have prevented 19th century urbanites from kidnapping their fledglings to sing in gilded cages. But they rule the roost at Itchy Dog Farm, and I'm glad they do.

* Photograph by Craig Walters, Avian Photographer Extraordinaire

** You can get notified of new blog posts by email by entering you address in "Follow by email" on the right-hand sidebar, under the Archive.

To Beef or Not To Beef

When I married a carnivore, we made a compromise.  We won't have meat when I'm  home, but he can consume all he wants when home alone or eating out.  I only ask that he please stick to beef rather than poultry or pork.  This surprises people.  Beef is the current protein non grata, both for health and environmental reasons.  But my personal concern is animal welfare.  Factory farmed chickens, turkeys and pigs will spend their entire lives in misery.  The beef cow at least spends the first nine or so months of his life grazing on grass under the open sky before being shipped off to the feedlot and the slaughterhouse.  And grass fed, organically raised beef cattle can have a pretty good life right up to the last day.

Cows on Williston Road

On the route from Itchy Dog Farm to town I pass miles of open pastureland before hitting the highway interchange, strip mall and traffic hell.  Right now the pastures are dotted with mama cows and their calves.  Earlier this spring the babies were nursing but now you see them grazing yards from their mothers and paying them no mind.  It's a beautiful sight, and I've often wondered if those pastures would be housing developments if they had no value for grazing.  Half of the agricultural land in Florida is used for beef production, but we're a "cow-calf" state -- our primary product is calves which are shipped to other states for finishing.

Earth Day last month was tough on beef.  I saw any number of posters riffing on Tim Benton's famous quote: “The biggest intervention people could make towards reducing their carbon footprints would not be to abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat.” Experts say beef production requires excessive amounts of water, emits large amounts of greenhouse gas, and uses land that could feed 10 million people if planted in staples.

But like most people I want to believe what I want to believe. I'm not grilling burgers on Memorial Day, I just want to enjoy the sight of these huge animals munching peacefully by the road.  There must be facts out there to support me.  I open a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations open in one tab (1) and a National Geographic article (2) in another.  And away we go.

Land degradation.  More than a quarter of the planet's ice-free land is used for grazing livestock, and a third of agricultural land is used for feed.  Grazing degrades the environment and decreases biodiversity.  This is bad.  But in the United States we're not razing rain forests to raise cattle. Most land used for beef cattle in the U.S. is unsuitable for farming, and converting grazing land to agriculture creates a different set of ills from erosion to fertilizer runoff.   Not to mention, sustainable farming of grass fed (pastured) beef actually improves the grassland.

Water depletion.  This one I know already.  In the county next to ours, a cattle ranch owned by Canadian billionaires wants to draw 1.2 million gallons a day from an already threatened aquifer, jeopardizing nearby Silver Springs and Salt Springs.  The planned 9,500 head of cattle will also produce 158 million pounds of manure and 11 million gallons of urine a year, polluting both ground and surface water.  Ugh.  But this is a factory farm, or as is known in the biz, a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation).  Pastured systems have significantly less impact on water resources.

Pollution.  Apart from animal waste, the largest source of pollution is the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow feed for CAFO cattle.  But in the U.S., beef cattle consume only about 10% of available grain, way less than the 36% used for ethanol production.  And if the grain wasn't being used for feed, it would surely be used for something else, so even if all beef cows were raptured tomorrow it's unlikely fertilizer use would go down.  And again, pastured beef is not fed grain by definition.

Climate change.  Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although it does not live in the atmosphere as long.  Cows belch methane, and apparently quite a lot of it.  The FAO estimated that beef production is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  Here CAFOs have the edge, because pastured cows emit more methane than grain-fed.  But well managed pastureland sequesters carbon, and the overall effect of pastured beef on the atmosphere may be positive.

Health.  Remember "Sleeper"?  In Woody Allen's classic 1973 film the protagonist wakes up 200 years in the future to find that steak and hot fudge are health foods.  Nutritional advice is constantly changing, but overall it seems like a little bit of anything on occasion is good for you while a lot of it all the time is bad.  While the Paleos and Ornishers duke it out, we could spend a moment worrying about antibiotic and hormone use in food animals.  Antibiotics given to CAFO cattle to keep them from getting sick on feed that ruminants are not designed to digest is probably contributing to increasing drug-resistant infections in humans.  Unfortunately, abstaining from CAFO beef yourself won't protect you; once superbugs develop, they're out there looking for you.

By now, I've almost forgotten the question. It's clear the equation is different locally and globally.  It's different if I'm comparing the effects of the beef industry to the poultry and pork industries or to crop-based ways of producing the same number of calories.  It's different for pastured and CAFO beef.  I almost wish I could ask a cow: are you happy being out there in the sunshine, even knowing what's likely to come?  But the cow doesn't know, and come to think of it, neither do we.

(1) Livestock's Long Shadow. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

(2) Carnivore's Dilemma. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/meat/

Abby

My sister Abby was the center of the known universe for eight good years before I came along and ruined everything.  She could not hide her black-hot hatred.  My parents kept my crib in their bedroom for a year because they thought she might try to smother me in the night.  Family lore has it that she broke my arm twice in failed attempts to do me in.  As I grew older and harder to damage, she alternately ignored my existence and tormented me without mercy.  Despite everything, I worshiped her like a god.  She was the smartest person I knew. She painted her room orange and wore nothing but black for two years.  She stood up to our father.

We shared what we considered an abusive childhood, although much later when I became a foster parent I realized it didn't come close.  Our father was a tin-pot dictator; an angry, bitter man who was only happy when denigrating someone else.  Our mother was a saint when she was sober.  Abby and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the house, but she was older and had more means at her disposal.  She tried to move in with friends, sleeping in bedroom closets so parents wouldn't know.  She tried to run away, once making it all the way to New York City.  When I was eight years old she figured it out.  My 16 year-old sister, her 18-year-old husband and their infant son moved into a one-bedroom apartment of their own.

Overnight the sister who couldn't stand me became my protector and constant companion.  She'd escaped from the house and was determined to spring me as well.  She let me stay overnight whenever I was allowed to, first in that tiny apartment and and ultimately in a mortgaged split-level ranch in a spanking new 1960s subdivision.   We called ourselves the BLEESTER SEESTERS and sang Wobbly anthems, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and Old Testament gospel at the top of our lungs.  We memorized Woody Allen and Jonathan Winter comedy albums.  We took car trips to parks and beaches with the baby in a laundry basket in the back of the Rambler station wagon.  We were mesmerized by the Buckley-Gore debates and could recreate every one, each of us playing either part.

Having an older sibling was invaluable -- she introduced me to Bob Dylan and pop art, explained Civil Rights and Freedom Summer, shared her cigarettes and joints and horrible 16 mm pornography.  When I went away to college, I did my best to return the favors.  For the first time my world was larger than hers, and I tried hard to bring it all back home.  I found anarchist professors, Marxist authors, student activists and libertarian economists and laid them on her doorstep like a cat leaving mouse parts on the pillow.

I never loved anyone as much or felt as special.  We called ourselves a gestalt -- not sisters or best friends but different parts of a single being.  But time moves on, decades pass, things change. In retrospect I can see we were once so close because we came from a small family in a tiny town and had a common enemy.  In time we both escaped, divorcing the past, acquiring husbands and lovers and children and friends and interests and experiences we couldn't share.  Over the next 40 years there were times when we felt as close as teenagers, times that were strained, and times when we were hardly in touch at all.

If Abby had found time to write her memoirs, I think they would have started after she moved to Gainesville and found her own real self.  She discovered her own voice and her own passions.  She raised five remarkable sons and daughters and married the love of her life.  She did not just rage against injustice and inequality, she fought it tooth and nail.  She lived more fully than anyone I've ever known, loved her family and friends as fiercely as anyone ever did, and never for a single moment looked back.  I needed to take this moment to look back, and now I'll try to move on.

Abby Goldsmith, 7/21/1945 - 4/27/2015.

The Ides of March

Now that it's April, I can say it.  I hate March.  I hated this March and I hated last March and I've hated March for as long as I can remember.  Twenty years ago my mother died in March.  Every year bad things happen in March, to me and to people I love.  I go into a blue funk and a brown study. T.S. Eliot had it wrong,

I began the month burying my sweet old horse and ended it with a speeding ticket.  In between, my husband, son and daughter all suffered significant setbacks.  Their stories aren't mine to tell, but in the way of families, their problems weigh heavier than my own.  I hate March.

Which of course leads me to wonder about the Ides of March. Clearly not a great thing for Caesar, but what the heck are Ides anyway, and should I worry about them?

Turns out whoever invented the Roman calendar either had a sick sense of humor or was a very odd duck.  Days of the months were not numbered one, two, three, four or first, second, third, fourth.  Dates were counted back from three fixed points based on the lunar calendar:  the Kalends at the start, named for the day that bills were due; the Nones, either the 5th or the 7th, depending on the month; and the Ides, the 13th or 15th.  The Ides of March was the 15th.

The unnamed days of the month would count back from the named days, so March 4 would be "IV Nones", or four days before the 7th, and March 14 would be "I Ides", one day before the 15th. As odd as this seems, it's at least a little consistent with Roman numerals which can also count back from significant numbers -- e.g. IV for 4 and IX for 9.  Kind of makes you wonder about the Romans.

We all know that Julius Caesar was warned to "beware the Ides of March" before his demise at the hands of 60 senators.  Those actual words were a bit of poetic license by Shakespeare, but according to Barry Strauss in The Death of Caesar, the historical ruler did visit a haruspex named Spurinna on February 15, 44 BC, and sacrificed a bull so that the soothsayer could predict his future.  Spurinna warned JC that his life would be in danger for the next 30 days, i.e. until March 15.  On that date Caesar told Spurinna that the Ides had come and was answered, "Aye, they have come but not gone."  That should have kept JC away from the senate, but the rest, as they say, is history.

Next question, what the heck is a haruspex?  Haruspices were people trained to read omens from  the entrails of sheep and poultry, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep. Haruspicy was a kind of specialty within the wider practice of divination from animal entrails, brought to Rome via the Etruscans, who were apparently quite good at it.  Caesar's soothsayer was surely of Etruscan descent, as Spurinna was a common Etruscan name.

Snide aside:  How do people come up with this stuff?  I mean, say I'm thinking about changing jobs or invading Persia and I want an idea of how it's likely to go.  I might think to pull petals off a daisy: good luck, bad luck, good luck, oops.  Or, if I need a bit more nuance, maybe I could try to interpret the clouds.  Are they white, dark, puffy, flat, shaped like duckies or H-bombs?  But no, of course I'll  slaughter some farm animals and look at their livers.  How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.

Back in the day, of course, it wasn't quite as bizarre as it appears to us now.  It would be natural for priests performing ritual sacrifices to look  at the carcass of a healthy sheep or calf and think the gods would  be pleased, whereas if the organs were diseased, maybe not so much.   Mesopotamians believed the liver to be the source of blood and hence of life, so paying particular attention to that organ would make sense.  And the more obscure something is the more privileged the practitioner, so you end up with exquisitely complicated liver topography that only experienced haruspices could interpret.

Whatever.  According to one story, Caesar's bull lacked a heart, always a bad sign.  According to others, Spurinna was also an astrologer and his prediction was primarily based on the planets.   In any case, Caesar took the prediction seriously but chose to go to the senate anyway.  He must have really hated March.

March is actually lovely in North Central Florida.  They days are warm and evenings cool. Redbuds and dogwoods line the county roads with pink and white. Deciduous trees begin to leaf out species by species, from sweetgums to cypress.  Robins and cedar waxwings visit in great numbers on their way back north. Winter gardens are harvested, spring gardens are planted, and potato gardens grow bushy and tall.

Now the house is filled with mosquitoes.  Tomato plants sag in the sun,  Pollen wafts down from the sky.  The humidity is creeping up, and highs in the 90s are  predicted.  Hello April, I love you.  

Norwegian Dancer

We got Norwegian Dancer, aka Weegie, not long after moving to Itchy Dog Farm.  Standing tall at 16.2 hands, Weeg was a dark bay Thoroughbred previously owned by Craig's friend Audrey, a professional horsewoman in Ocala.  She had taken a job with a stable that required summers in Pennsylvania and she could no longer afford to move Weegie back and forth twice a year.

I had originally hoped for a couple of horses we could ride together, maybe plodders retired from the trail. Weegie was 29 years old and although it was clear he was game to work, the idea of riding him seemed mean.  But Craig said he was the best horse ever and we had to take him, so we took him.

Turned out, Weegie was the best horse ever.  He did this little nibble-nuzzle with his lips that tickled you into a laugh.  You could groom him forever without a halter.  He stood for the farrier, only getting agitated if requested to lift a leg out of turn.  And he had the most gorgeous gait.  Our neighbors own and board astonishingly expensive horses and I never saw one of them move as beautifully as our Weeg.

As it happens, I somehow believed a lot of misinformation about him.  I thought he was born in the UK and had a successful racing career overseas before coming to the States to be retrained as a competitive dressage horse.  In my research after his death, I found he was born in Kentucky in 1982.  His sire was Nobel Dancer from Great Britain, his dam Patriotic Petunia out of Floral Park by National. As a 3-year-old he was unplaced in 12 starts, which means he did not win, place or show in the twelve races he was entered in.  The New Jersey Register for October 30, 1985 lists his odds as 8:1 in the first heat at the Meadowlands, $7,500 prize.

In 1988 he was sold by consignor Dancer's Hill Farm to an R. D. Brady for $1200.  I do not know how he came to to be used for dressage or how he came to be owned by Audrey.  I can't find anything about his dressage career.  I did find an article published in 2015 about his sire, Noble Dancer, that states:

Noble Dancer went on to sire some magnificent stakes winners: Explosive Dancer, Noble Fury, Island Sun, Noble Cookie, Norwegian Dancer and Noble Ringer are just a few of his outstanding offspring.

So he was an outstanding offspring, I'm just not sure at what. 

No matter, we loved that horse.  If he had any downside at all, it was how he hated to be alone in the pasture. It was not an easy job finding pasture pals for him.  First we tried in succession a couple of younger Arabs whose owners were only too happy to give them away.  Weegie is submissive about his food, and we had to rehome one Arab after another when they gobbled up his fodder.  Next we got Pebbles, a sweet blond mini horse, from a nearby equine rescue.  She had horrible health issues from the start, but Weegie adored her and would not leave her side.  After her death we briefly suffered the Donkey From Hell who would not let Weegie eat at all.  Finally we found a pony named Chavez. Weegie's mini-me, Chavez was a little copy of Weege and they loved each other like nothing I've seen before.  They could not be more than a few feet apart, and neither would let the other be taken away.  The farrier and the equine vet quickly learned they could could only treat one horse if the other was standing beside.

BFF

Chavez has laminitis from grazing  on our rich pasture grass, and I always thought he was the one to worry about.  But a week ago Friday, just a few weeks before Weegie's 33rd birthday, I found him swaying like a drunkard, shifting his weight from one front foot to another.  Both feet were so painful he could not stand on either.  I made an appointment with the vet and plied him with Bute to ease the pain.  When she came the following Monday, she confirmed he had foundered and his coffin bone was pushing through the hoof.  There was nothing to do but put him down.

I have been imagining Weegie crossing the Rainbow Bridge.  He might have just walked across with his typical confidant dignity.  Or maybe he galloped across like the 3-year-old racehorse he once was.  Or he could have trotted lightly, head up and tail flowing in the best dressage style.  But I like best to think that he cantered across that bridge with his effortless, big-horse loping gait that we watched so often in the pasture, when suddenly he would throw back his head and run for no reason I could see except the love of running.  He runs and runs, and his feet don't hurt and his muscles are long and hard, and he runs and runs and his head is high and he doesn't even care that there is a world of fat sweet grass waiting on the other side.

Jeepers Peepers!

The best time to set hens to have the best, largest, and most kindly chickens is in February in the increase of the moon, so that she may hatch or disclose her chickens in the increase of the next new moon, being in March; for one brood of March chickens is worth three broods of any other.*

Jeepers Creepers, where'd ya get those peepers?**

Every year we raise a new batch of kindly chicks to add to our flock.   The feed store in Archer sells pullets from the beginning of February through the middle of April, but the real excitement begins in late January when they publish the weekly schedule of Chick Days:

02/05/15  25 RHODE ISLD RED PULLETS

                   25 BARRED ROCK PULLETS

                   25 BUFF ORPINGTON PULLETS

                   25 AMERAUCANA PULLETS

                   25 FRENCH GUINEA ST RUNS

Craig and I pore over this list with the fervor that others save for their spring seed catalogs.  Chick Days represents winter's end, anticipation, rebirth and renewal, boundless possibility.  We are tantalized by twenty or more breeds of hens, not to mention turkeys, guinea fowl and partridges.   Is this the year to take a chance on AST FRIZZLE COCHIN BANTAM?

But we are practical farmers.  Above all we want hens that are good layers, predisposed to be docile and friendly, and not inclined to brood.  That eliminates motherly girls like cochins and silkies, as well as breeds that prefer to be left alone, like anconas and leghorns.   We're in Florida, so heat-tolerance is always a good quality.  Heavy breeds are less likely to fly over the fence into the pasture or our neighbors' yards.  Craig likes colorful eggs.  I like beautiful birds, but they're all beautiful birds.

Our first ever flock consisted of two Rhode Island Reds, two Plymouth Rocks, and two black sex-links (the always-female issue of a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen).   Both Reds and Rocks are quintessential American birds, popular on small farms, and good for both eggs and meat.  Our Rocks were white with black and gold flecks and the sex-links were black with rust and gold, all of them speckled and sparkling and glinting in the sun.  I thought they were the prettiest birds I'd ever seen until we got our Buff Orpingtons, golden yellow beauties with bright red combs.  They strut picture perfect against the green grass and lay lovely large light brown eggs.   I thought they were the most beautiful birds I'd ever seen until we got our Brahmas...  

So, Craig and I work our way down the Chick Days flyer.  There is a vocabulary you have to know.  Pullets are formally hens under a year old, but used here simply to indicate the chicks are all  female.  Bantams are smaller counterparts of full-sized breeds.  ST RUNS or "straight runs" means the chicks have not been sexed and will be a mix of pullets and roosters.   We google our favorite chicken fact sites.  Dominiques are handsome and thrive in both heat and cold, but wait, they're light and can be flighty.  Naked Necks get 4.6 stars from Backyard Chickens but they look like something out of Dr. Seuss.  Cuckoo Marans lay enticing chocolate colored eggs but are down as good brooders.  So many chickens, so little time.  Finally we settle on Speckled Sussex pullets.  Affectionate, intelligent, curious, almost dog-like, they are neither broody nor flighty and are consistent producers of large brown eggs.

Alas, when our Chicken Day comes, the Speckled Sussex don't arrive as scheduled.  The hatchery has substituted Blue Hamburg bantams.  The feed store clerk and I are equally nonplussed.  The bantams are out of the question -- they are flighty and will lay small white eggs -- but I am not leaving the store without some peepers.  I purchase four partridge Ameraucana pullets.  They are GORGEOUS.  Buff with brown patches  running from the crown of their heads through the center of their backs, framed by a brown stripe on either side.  They are such sweet babies they don't run away when I try to pick them up.  They will lay pale blue eggs. They are the Best Chickens Ever.

Ameraucana peepers, one day old.

Our little peepers will live in a galvanized steel tub in the living room with an infrared heat lamp to keep them warm.   We'll hold them on our laps whenever possible to get them used to human touch.   In a couple of weeks their permanent feathers will grow in and they will be able to stay outside in a dog crate on warm afternoons.   Eventually they will range free in the sunshine and sleep in the chicken palace with the big girls.  They will forage for seeds and bugs and lay eggs with incredible orange yolks.  With luck they will live well beyond their egg-producing years and die of natural causes.   It is a good life for a chicken here at Itchy Dog Farm.

* Advice from Gervase Markham’s A Way to Get Wealth, 1625, as excerpted by Jeff Kacirk for his Forgotten English Calendar entry for 16 February 2015, and sent to me by my friend Charles Husbands.

** Start of 1938 song by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer.

Postscript:  Unless you buy from your farmers' market, the eggs you are frying for breakfast likely came from a factory farm where thousands of birds are crammed together vertically in battery cages in windowless sheds.  Each hen has a space the size of a piece of notebook paper on which to live out her life.  She will never see the sky, scratch the earth for bugs, or splash in a dirt bath.  Her beak will be clipped (without anesthetic) so that in her misery and boredom she doesn't peck herself or others to death.  She may have such a serious calcium deficiency from over-production of eggs that her bones are broken.  Happily her life expectancy is short and she will soon be slaughtered for food scraps.  

The River Styx

In Greek mythology, the River Styx, or River of Hate, was one of five rivers separating the underworld from the world of the living.  The others were Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe, or Woe, Lamentation, Fire and Forgetfulness, respectively.   Although Ovid's Metamorphoses puts the ferryman Charon [Kharon] on the banks of the Styx, all Greek and most other Roman accounts have Charon and his dragon-tailed dog Cerberus ferrying the souls of the dead across the River Acheron.  Nonetheless, Styx was the principal river of Hades, circling it nine times before draining into the Stygian marsh.

In Alachua County, the River Styx flows from a swamp in the Longleaf Flatlands Reserve to Orange Lake.  It is part of a conservation ecosystem known as the Lochloosa Connector, linking Newnans Lake in the north through Paynes Prairie to the River Styx and Orange Lake. In the summer I don't think I could afford enough mosquito repellent to keep me alive for an hour on the Styx, but on these glorious, mosquito-free, North Florida winter days a paddle up the river is far more like Paradise than Hades.

Towards Orange Lake

The best place to put in is at the bridge over County Road 346 in Micanopy.  It's an ugly, aging concrete slab bridge but it does have a wonderful view.  Just over the bridge is a pull-off where you can park your vehicle and carry your boat down to the river. Go downstream and you will ultimately end up in the spacious waters of Orange Lake.  Turn upstream and the water carries you a mile or so into strand swamp before the vegetation becomes impenetrable.  You may start out under blue skies but it gets darker and darker the further you paddle.  You skirt towering bald cypress with buttress roots and hear creatures plopping into the water, hoping turtle not gator.  You wouldn't be surprised to see Bigfoot.

The area includes the Micanopy Cypress wood stork rookery and is known as the home of nesting pairs of these threatened birds as well as Florida black bear and river otter.  Craig and I have never seen anything so remarkable on our paddles, but even the usual wildlife is stunning.  Bald eagles are common, as are ducks and all manner of wading birds including herons, egret, ibis and limpkin.  Anhinga are rampant.  These beautiful birds swim submerged in the water with only their long, S-shaped necks above the surface, giving them their other name, Snakebird.  They are often seen resting with their wings stretched out to dry.  They are all over Florida but I've never seen so many in one place as on the Styx.

In mythology, the poisonous waters of the Styx could confer invulnerability to the gods but were toxic to mortals.  (Achiles' mom dipped him in the Styx as a baby, but the heel of his foot where she held him stayed dry, hence Achiles' heel.)  The water was so corrosive it could only be contained in a horse's hoof.  It is now believed that the real life Styx is a stream called Mavroneri (Black Water) in the Peloponnesian mountains. Even now, locals avoid drinking the water and say it corrupts drinking vessels.  Recently researchers at Stanford have proposed that the Mavroneri may have contained a lethal bacteria-produced poison, calicheamicin, and more, that water from Styx/Mavroneri might have been used to poison Alexander the Great.

Heading upstream

The water of our River Styx is stained mahogany red and has the faint but unmistakable odor of Cypress swamp.  So far as I know it is neither poisonous nor corrosive, but it does have magical powers.  A shaft of sunlight through the trees can turn dark water into gold, and a heron rising from the weeds can make your heart fly.





A few follow-ups on earlier posts:

Elinor is back to her normal sweet self, and egg production exceeds our capacity for egg consumption.

Number 9 is still spending his days with his sandhill crane friends at the Beef Teaching Unit.