WHAT I LEARNED THAT SURPRISED ME
By Karen Dove Barr
Deer,
raccoon, and wild hogs outnumbered humans on Skidaway Island when I first moved
there. I expected that. Alligators were a protected rarity. But nobody had prepared me for the multitude
of other species.
The first
time I saw golfers pitching balls around a four-foot-tall endangered great blue
heron, I was amazed traffic didn’t stop and cameras aim. I parked my car and walked back to the lagoon
to stare. I wanted to holler,
“Look! Look!” at the oblivious golfers. Later I learned the big birds line every golf
hole and engineered lagoon. When I rode
my bike in the mornings I got used to one swiveling his head as I passed within
two feet. Only when I stopped my bike did
he utter a loud, “grounck, grounck,” and fly off.
Susan
Klein surprised me when I asked if she had any unusual encounters with wildlife
to share. Neither Susie nor I had
expected to reside in a neighborhood with bobcats in our yard. She was watching
a golden-crowned kinglet compete with a mockingbird at her feeder when she
glimpsed a gray and brown blur hiding in the gray and brown marsh grass just
behind the feeder. Stealthy hunter, felis rufus, the North American bobcat
was watching too.
I was
shocked to see mink crossing the path in front of my bicycle at dawn one
morning. Fur coats usually stay in
closets in our tropical paradise. I
didn’t know mink lived in the South.
Within a
twenty year period of strict federal protection in Savannah, seeing an
alligator went from a rare and exciting event to being as common as chasing
squirrels off a birdfeeder. Now
alligators line every lagoon bank in spring and residents eyeball the wake
behind snouts and submerged bodies. We weren’t prepared for the rapid
repopulation.
I lived
the book WILD TIMES ON SKIDAWAY ISLAND. My research followed the experience. I’m still being surprised and still writing
new stories about amazing animal encounters on Skidaway Island.
Wild Times on Skidaway Island
by Karen
Dove Barr
BLURB:
WILD
TIMES ON SKIDAWAY ISLAND, Georgia's Historic Rain Forest, details life in a
unique Audubon-designated, ecologically friendly refuge. There, golfers pitch
balls around endangered great blue herons, mama raccoons march their babies
across backyard decks where once Guale Indians trapped ancestors of the same
raccoons, and residents dodge alligators and rescue snakes.
Even
the vegetation is wild. Three hundred-year-old oaks dripping Spanish moss and
poison ivy surmount an under-story of wax myrtle and holly. Carolina jasmine,
Cherokee roses, and endangered orchids grow wild in the rain forest. The book
examines choices residents make when stared down by a bald eagle, when a red-tailed
hawk mistakes a golf ball for bird food, when wakened at midnight by deer
munching hibiscus. Wild Times on Skidaway Island educates about the species
that residents must adapt to on this historic island.
EXCERPT
When Walt and Carol Culin topped their house at The Landings
with a coated metal roof they were confident the roof would be problem-free for
a hundred years. Walt’s contacts as head
of an industrial coating company helped him get the latest technology. Even a hurricane shouldn’t destroy their
unusual–looking roof.
But nothing in Walt’s Princeton-educated background prepared
him for dryocopus pileatus, the pilated wookpecker.
Male pilated woodpeckers are fixated on the notion that
female woodpeckers are attracted to the stud with the noisiest pecker. Usually
the woodpecker has to be content with drumming on a hollow tree to resonate his
sound. Walt and Carol’s metal roof, however, raised the bar for the local
woodpecker population. Walt and Carol
were regularly awakened by mate-seeking woodpeckers as soon as they moved into
the house.
Walt ended up having to make a run to Toys ’R Us for rubber
snakes. Glued to the chimney alongside a big fake owl, the snakes allowed Walt
and Carol to catch some winks in the early morning during woodpecker mating
season.
KAREN DOVE BARR, ATTORNEY AND AUTHOR
Karen
Dove Barr, Attorney, was recently recognized by the Georgia State Bar for
providing legal assistance to military families and service members. She has practiced in the field of family law
in Savannah for 34 years.
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