What The Shell, Day 4

If you are on Sanibel early morning after a storm and the tide is on its way out, the place to be is on the beach near our cottage, which is where all the shells wash up.  I think the ones I found are pretty spectacular but I expect that serious shellers would not be much impressed.  There is not a left-handed Junonia in sight.

Also it is worth noting that the high tide of the previous cycle came well up to the cottages right on the beach, indeed they were boarded up and sandbagged to prevent flooding.  While Kristy’s mom noted that they’d been there for 40 years and hadn’t gone anywhere (this in response to some flip comment I made about climate change), I hope the Castaways Cottages folks have a Plan B because those cottages are not, in fact, going to be here much longer, just saying. 

Yesterday wasn’t as long as my write-up makes it sound, but we pretty much did all the stuff there is to do on Sanibel . . . EXCEPT for visiting the universally-beloved J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge which is inexplicably closed on Fridays.[1]  Here you can drive along the road or take a tram and get out at various points to see:

Alligators

All kinds of birds (over 240 different kinds!)

Snakes

Turtles and other reptiles

Mammals of the four-footed variety

and

Manatees

It’s pretty awesome.  We immediately spy an alligator lounging in a drainage ditch, and we see birds galore but are sad that despite assiduously stopping at every possible watery viewing spot, we see no manatees. 

It is possible that the visitors’ center is the most interesting place because that is where you learn about Ding Darling, who was a mid-20^th c. cartoonist and wildlife conservationist.  You’re wondering about the Ding, aren’t you?  The Wikipedia tells us that while in college (Beloit, in WISCONSIN) he started signing some of his art as D’ing, a contraction of his last name.  Now, all the official signs for the refuge write Ding in this fanciful cursive Ding which may be his actual signature but which Peter thinks is just the refuge taking advantage of the whole Disney aura that permeates Florida. 

At any rate, there is an exhibit with Ding’s office and some of his cartoons and a really marvelous giant gun that looks like a blunderbuss hanging over it all.  It is called a punt gun and was used by hunters (who clearly missed the point of hunting) to basically kill an entire flock of birds at once, a practice known as market-shooting.  The guns were so big they were mounted on small boats – punts – and then a bright light was shone in the dark to gather the ducks together at which point they were all blasted to kingdom come by a single shot.  Despite being outlawed since the late 19^th c., punt guns were still being used by a few unscrupulous types on the Eastern seaboard, hunting ducks to sell through game bootleggers for the nightclub trade in metropoli like New York and Philadelphia.[2]  Ding’s trophy was sent to him as a souvenir of his service as head of the US Biological Survey (now known as US Fish and Wildlife Service), by game wardens who recovered it in a marsh during the Great Punt-Gun Crackdown of 1934-35.[3] 

After all that wildlife watching it is all we can do to loll on the beach for a few hours, even though the wind remains unnecessarily strong.  Izzy is reading The DaVinci Code, at Peter’s recommendation, and cannot put it down anyway so she is impervious to wind.  I, an intellectual, am attempting to read Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End which is one of the great novels of the 20^th century and about my favorite war (WW1) but has not yet grabbed me the way, say, Wonder Woman (another great WW1 tale) did.  Bill and Peter are racing each other to the end of Say Nothing, which is a gripping and horrifying story of The Troubles told through one particular event, and you should totally read it. 

We dine at the “fancy” restaurant across the street tonight and Peter and I succumb to steaks because we just can’t deal any more with the grouper and there’s a certain amount of coconut on the menu.  But Bill’s cobia actually looks delicious, as does the snapper at the next table so we eat our (excellent) steaks a little defensively. 

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[1] I’m reminded by our Information Officer that in fact the refuge is closed one day a week in order to allow the staff to perform maintenance, and to give the animals a day off.  Suspect the animals are in the International Union of Wildlife Workers which is probably pretty powerful in these parts but are they UAW?  Probably, makes about as much sense as graduate students.

[2] I feel like it is OK if I eat duck now, because it is mostly farmed, but if I was hanging out in nightclubs in the 1930s, I might have been eating market-hunted birds, which is rather appalling to think about. 

[3] I don’t actually know what it was called but there was apparently a concerted effort during those years to get rid of them and this seems like it would be a good name.