• Tag Archives South
  • Gators

    Beltane              Waxing Dyan Moon

    gatorThis southern gentleman showed up on my tour of Okefeenokee Swamp.  He hissed and opened his mouth wide. (Does that mean he’s related to Jesse Helms?) After we moved past him, he moved to another patch of grass and rolled over on his side, happy at having driven away the intruders.

    The gator is the moose and the wolf of the south.  It shows up on license plates, as school mascots and in tourist ware like mugs and hot pads.

    Chip, the crocodilian biologist who gave me the tour, said that the crocodilian’s basic survival strategy got put into place 30-40 million years ago and has not changed since.  They hunt the shoreline and low water edges, relying on stealth and speed to catch birds, deer, fish.

    The females (you cannot tell a female from a male without opening them up) lay a large number of eggs, guard their brood and hope for the best.  It seems to work.  Think of all that time.


  • Fried Foods. Enough.

    Beltane         Waxing Dyan Moon

    Folkston, Georgia           Gateway to the Okefenokee

    The Okefenokee Restaurant is the place to eat in Folkston.  It has a country buffet.  When I looked at the fried entrees, I asked for a menu. It said, “We encourage you to try the buffet.”  This after a short menu of fried food.

    There was however enough fruit and vegetables to satisfy me when I reinspected the buffet.  Hah.  After a week plus in the south, the sight of fried food has begun to have an aversive affect on me.

    This is the area of Georgia known as the piney woods, the growth on the sandy soil here that is not swamp.  Some of it is the remains of an ancient barrier island, Trail Ridge, which forms the eastern boundary of the Okefenokee.  In the day of the barrier island the Okefenokee was a salt marsh protected from the Atlantic by the island.