The Everglades Holiday Park Essay, Research Paper

The Everglades Holiday Park

Heading west on Pines Boulevard passing all the new construction and development in the area, saying to myself, this is man made beauty, but I knew it had to stop somewhere and that somewhere was the US 27 road, I then proceeded to head north on US 27 and noticed on the right a small area of Dwarf Cypress that are not protected, and probably won’t be around to long.

The Everglades National Park is where you go to see the beauty of nature. When, I first arrived there saw lots of birds, and was shocked to see a peacock walking around like it was nothing. The park itself was so green and healthy; you could even smell a fresher air. The first thing that happened was the airboat ride; there weren’t a lot of people aboard, but the captain of the boat was not so well with speaking English and understanding it.

We headed out on the boat through slough that was told it was man-made, and not natural which I was surprised because suited the scenery. The ride was scary at first, it seemed like we going to crash into the tree island, because of the way the airboat maneuvers. We were going to an island to watch alligator wrestling, we arrived and were greeted. On the island there was little booths selling either alligator meat, jewelry, and souvenirs, of Native American who were at the Everglades before man, know all that was needed to know about the Everglades. After, touring the small island the alligator show began. I learned that there are Two million alligators in the Everglades. Also, that alligators get their strength from the sun, but the day I went was chilly so the alligators were slightly lazy. They also can’t see at the tip of their nose or (straight-ahead), and their brain are the size of a humans figure nail.

We left the island and began to explore a small portion of the Everglades. The first thing we saw was a flattened stems, our captain said it could be from a airboat it could be from alligators and out appeared six-feet alligator seating around probably waiting for prey. Our captain pull-up and stop by the alligator took some bread and threw it around the alligator, which also attracted birds in the area. The captain caught a fish and tried to feed it to the alligator, but he was not interested in fish probably it is not his taste and preference or even the lack of sunlight causing him to be lazy.

We moved on through Anhinga trails seeing variety of birds such as the purple gallinules, hawks, vultures, and pelicans. The purple gallinules fascinated me the most because they are so use to humans, they will come right up to you if there is bread in your hand. The purple gallinules also will fight or even kill one another for that piece of bread that we were feeding them. The purple gallinule is shaped like small chickens, but

possesses unbelievable color, only the adult bird the exotic; the young gallinule has brown feathers. The one hawk we saw was just sitting in a tall tree looking at us as we passed by. The vultures just circled the in sky, looking and waiting for prey. The last bird I saw was a pelican, but not for long the noise from the airboat scared him of. When the pelican flow of it was so graceful in the sky than the other birds.

The captain of the boat mentioned that there were forty types of snakes, and of the forty, four of them were poisonous. The snake we encounter with was the Florida cotton mouth or commonly called the water moccasin but it was a baby though.

As, we moved along through Anhinga trail, we same upon another alligator, but this one was bigger and hostile, it was about twelve feet-long and around forty years old according to the captain of the airboat. The captain offers this alligator bread and it excepted immediately. The captain mention that the alligator doesn’t have any interest humans is too large, and we tend to be too salty. If you still get too close the alligator will have its way you. The alligator is one of the important animals in the Everglades; they have the place in the ecosystem of the everglades. We saw that the alligator was in a hole of some kind made up tress and scrubs (often willow). The hole is probably centuries old and have been maintained by other generation alligators, the holes also serves as a haven for water bird; that I found out.

Almost to the end of the of the airboat ride, the captain stopped again. He pull out the root of ____________________, cut it up at the end root and cut it to the center and ate the root; and said that the native Americans use eat the root also for food. He pass

Some of it around, but nobody ate any, even myself. He also, pointed out spatterdock

or yellow water lily. He said that if you watch it careful enough that you could see it move in and out. I tried to observe a spatterdock but I did not see any movement.

We docked back and the ride was over back to regular pavement. The ride was exciting, but I wished that I could have better understood the captain better, to learn more on the ride.

Once you get back to the parking lot you go back to man-made everything, see how close the development is to the Everglades. Everyone who is a South Florida resident should go to Everglades see it for himself or herself, because it is a natural beauty; and then they will have more respect for it. The more people find out the Everglades and the way ecosystem works, the better chance we have at a restoration goal. The restoration process should be publish more so the developers, and Water Management know what they are doing is harmful to our environment.

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