Sunday, July 10, 2011

Snake-Ridden Florida Island Provides Unlikely Haven for Birds

Snake-Ridden Florida Island Provides Unlikely Haven for Birds

Yesterday, Lisa and I decided to take our Hobie Adventure Island to Cedar Key - more specifically to Seahorse Key where only twice a year they have an open house for their marine laboratory and lighthouse. Lisa sat on the trampoline while I peddled over to Snake Key by mistake, but soon realized we were heading the wrong way. We couldn't read the warning signs as we pulled up to Seahorse Key. We were in about a foot of water when Lisa saw a shark dorsal fin. I ignored her shark ignorance figuring it was probably a sunfish or sea walleye. We decided to relieve ourselves and go back to Cedar Key since I was peddling and there was no wind for the sail and it was getting late. We started seeing dorsal fins - lots of dorsal fins. Then, the drivetrain got buried and we had to push with our paddles to get off the bottom since we were experiencing low tide. More sharks. We kept pushing and neither of us were volunteering to walk in the shallow water to get to deeper water. We ended up zigzagging back to the channel and peddling back in.

Oh, and then the cottonmouth snakes on Seahorse Key: http://www.fws.gov/cedarkeys/wildlife.html

I think in the future we are going to plan a bit better when we do something like that. It was a last minute thought since we were originally going to go to nearby Atsena Otie, but decided to see the open house light house that is only open twice a year on Seahorse Key. We should have brought more fluids, binoculars, camera, whistle, and other emergency supplies. Don't know what the he77 we were thinking.

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