Flat Cats

A recent article in the Naples News detailed the death of the 8th Florida Panther this year. It was suggested that at this pace the cats were set to "demolish" last year's record of 11 road kills for the year.

The 3 year old cat was hit 10 miles east of the National Park. CLICK HERE for my custom map of every Florida Panther fatality since 1972. You can see that the only two of the Florida Panthers have been hit in the area that this one was hit on Tuesday. The suggestion is that there are more panthers and they have needed to expand their range. (Probably slightly true) This concerns people. Imagine Florida Panthers in your backyard! (One had "menaced" a goat farm...not the same goat farm i visited though). It should be noted that there have been 16 fatalities caused by (Pumas, Cougars, Mountain Lions) since 1890 in the US and Canada combined! There are an average of 6 attacks on humans a year across this range and there have never been attacks in Florida in this time.

What people are not considering is that we are in the midst of one of our worst droughts ever in Florida. No water means the cats need to follow their food source. Deer, pigs, armadillo seek out water too and where they go, the cats may follow. There is simply not enough water out there. Combine the lack of water with the serious fire situation, we have fires popping up every day across Florida and already over 40,000 acres of Everglades have burned. So is it possible that lack of water, fire and food is pushing the cats out of the dried up swamps?

With 6 million people in southern Florida now, it must be difficult for the cats to not come into contact with humans. And amazingly it's still rare. But sadly, like shark and alligator attacks, the media sensationalizes stories and the sheep that humans tend to be take the bait. If only they would stop and consider, but I guess everything the media says is true.....

Es Un Chivito Lindo

Sometimes you get gators, sometimes you get goats.

I had a scheduled tour today, which means up at 6 am and out of the house before the sun comes up. Bright-eyed and bushy bearded - I ambled off to work, eager to get back to the Everglades. MaLe and I had explored in the Picayune State Forest of the Everglades on Saturday, but I had not led a tour in 2 weeks which may be why I've been crabby.

So I picked up the tour van and headed out to find my travelers. It was a beautiful morning. Sunny. 70 degrees and breezy. A great day for gators and a great day to be in the 'glades. But my travelers never showed. Dejected, I drove back to drop the van off with the boss and headed back home.

On my way home from work at 7:50 am, I passed by a place that is affectionately known as the "Million Dollar Goat Farm". There is a CVS pharmacy to the west of the goat farm and a Walgreens Pharmacy to the east. (This is the standard for every other intersection in Florida. Can't have one without the other.) A Burger King is across the street and an apartment complex towers above the goat farm to the north. Developers have just about succeeded in building on or paving over everything here in Fort Myers and Lee County and yet here remains, on what is no doubt a very pricey piece of land, a huge goat farm. And today the goats were out in force.

Now I'm not suggesting that goats are anything special. Rumor has it they are destructive little...monsters, but seeing hundreds of goats where a developer has no doubt considered placing a 7-11, Juicy Lucy's or a drive-thru ophthalmologist kind of lifted my spirits. Someone owns that property. Someone has held off the developers and someone has left hundreds of cute goats to roam about and leave an otherwise unsightly landscape somewhat wild. And for the record, goats ain't native to Florida. They're just damn cute.