The Joys of Just Sitting

When we visited our old friend Michael Marzella on Pine Island, FL, this osprey came over to check on us while we ate lunch along the water of peaceful Pine Island.

I’ve been sitting outside our motor home today in the waning afternoon sun, watching a squirrel making his world perfect. I watched this for more than hour. Now, I know, if you are a captain of industry, running a company, making millions, a retiree who spends his/her time keeping track of the rise and fall of the stock market, or even being the captain of a charter boat that sails the Gulf Stream to bring dreams of paradise to your clients, watching a squirrel for an hour seems like an enormous waste of time.

It is not. It is fascinating.

The squirrel lives in the oak tree that provides shade to our rig. From his point of view, it’s his tree. So he’s not thrilled to have a motor home skulking under his tree. Add to that, he has to deal with the outrageous annoyance of having two cats that watch him for countless hours, with much twitching of tails. But a squirrel must go on living.

He comes down the tree trunk, head first, seemingly oblivious to the law of gravity. He stops and starts, quivering and shaking his gossamer-thin tail at enemies of the world of squirrel-hood. He lands on the ground, gently, rummages for a nut or some other tid-bit. He’s pretty thorough, digging under the ground, sifting the dirt through his two front paws, placing some treasure in his mouth for a few seconds to taste its value to him.

His almond-shaped eyes dart back and forth, constantly on the alert for trouble. He sits on his hind legs and cleans himself with his two front paws. He’s at one with his universe. When a dog walks by on a leash, he’d instantly on guard. He never lets that dog out of sight until it disappears among the other campsites.

Everything in his world is tied to his eyesight and his sense of smell, it seems. He constantly is looking for his next meal. We’d just cleaned off our picnic tables and the debris from the grill had landed on the ground. He was all over it, picking up the burned bits of chicken or pork ribs that we’d had during the week. He poked the tasty bits into his mouth. Wait a minute. I thought these creatures were vegetarian! Doesn’t look like it to me. I’d say he has adapted his eating behavior to be an omnivore. It’s all good from his point of view. Just like the wild hogs that roam in the park we stay.

These hogs came over more than 600 years ago from Cuba. Brought over by the Spanish conquistadors. They were allowed to run free and breed with the idea they would be a source of meat to the Spaniards. And did they ever! There now are thousands wandering in the wilderness of South Florida. A ranger told us the other night that they are not rounded up and killed in our park (Collier-Seminole in the Everglades) because the panthers that are highly endangered here like to chow down on wild hogs. Just to the north of here, however, there are 550 wild hogs living on the island of Cayo Costa. 

Jo and I and our kids anchored off Cayo Costa back in the 1970s. All I remember of it, though, were the stunningly beautiful white sand beaches and the billion-strong mosquitoes that kept guard over the island paradise. The mosquitoes were so plentiful that they actually drove us back into the Gulf of Mexico with their ferocious biting. We escaped with our lives – but barely.

Before we came down the coast to camp at Collier-Seminole State Park, we stayed at Myakka River State Park. We loved that park. Never have we seen such a remarkable array of water birds. Each day, we’d make our way to the side of Myakka Lake and view the 100-plus white pelicans – enormous birds with a wingspan that stretches between 6 and 8 feet. They are fascinating to watch because they are group feeders. That is to say, they have worked out that if they work in a circle they can corral the fish in the lake. They close the circle slowly and then, in unison, they stick their huge bills under the water and simultaneously slurp down the trapped dish.

We also spent time watching roseate spoonbills, kites, osprey, all manner of hawks, black-backed stilts who are just as described: a long-legged bird with a black back, that stalk through the shallows, dipping their beaks into the muddy water and almost always coming up with a dainty morsel.

No. I think just sitting and watching is a fine thing for a man to do. Perhaps there is nothing better than to stop, look and listen to the great world around us.

Two moorhens paddle by a squadron of white pelicans on Myakka Lake.