My very first week in Florida was like that. Mostly I ate concentrated protein bars and starved for real food. A few days before I was ready to fly back home, I accidentally killed an armadillo on the road. I pulled over with some regret to see what I had done. The corpse was surprisingly tidy, as my attempt to swerve enough to miss the animal had resulted in a neatly crushed skull and minimal damage to the little armored body. The sudden, deep and covetous appetite with which I found myself regarding that small dead creature was an education all by itself.
Florida is a herpetologist's paradise. It is warm and tropical, the trees are bearded and dripping with Spanish moss, and the Spanish moss is dripping with frogs. Snakes slither in the comparative coolness of the leaf litter below, and pale green lizards mark out their territory with sharp bobs of their crimson bright throatflaps. In the swamps, rough gnarled logs with red lamplight eyes float quietly, or turn tail and dive with an offended splash if you venture too near what you thought was only sun-burned wood floating in the water.
Driving back home by night on the narrow, bumpy roads, your high beams sweep forward to uncover broken-backed snakes writhing on the hard asphalt and a myriad of suicidal frogs leaping under your wheels. It is impossible not to run them over, no matter how hard you try, and their soft bodies crunch sadly on the warm, sticky tar of the road. I cannot count how many times I stopped and mourned, or more happily managed a reptilian rescue.
The solid, surprisingly heavy bodies of the frogs were moist and yielding against my palms as they struggled in dazed slow motion to win free for another suicidal run against the road. Garter snakes ribboned wildly between my fingers, tying their dusky striped selves in tangled, panicked knots. A spectacularly red-gold rat snake clutched trustingly around my wrist as I lifted it from the matching yellow stripe of the median, its unblinking eyes like bright jewels in the rain and the darkness. I will always remember the ones I saved. I will never forget the ones I did not.
I wasted no time on other pursuits. The famous Florida beaches, just five minutes away from my hotel room, were not worthy of a visit or even a glance. Disney World an hour away was out of the question. I even begrudged time spent in eating, as intensely interested as I usually am in culinary pursuits. There were snakes outside, you see. Also spiders, and strange fantastic centipedes, and walking sticks, and grasshoppers in hues like bright crayons feasting on the abundant greenery. Day and night I pursued them relentlessly with hooks and tongs and cloth cases stolen from hotel pillows. Like a miser hoarding these bright-scaled jewels, I begrudged every moment spent on less necessary acquisitions, such as food and sleep.
So it was not only inevitable, but obvious, that I should eat that poor slaughtered armadillo. To finish what I had begun - to skin and gut him, to dip him in seasoned crumbs and to pile him around with little wild berries, that was the work of a few nimble minutes for well practiced hands. To stop for groceries, that would have taken much longer. So there was really no other choice.
By the way, he was awfully tasty. I've made rather a habit of it since my return to Florida, and the alligators at the zoo get the parts I don't eat myself. I don't like to see a life wasted, and this is a good way to show respect and appreciation as well as being a convenient and tasty meal for the diehard road herper.
Back to the Herp Fun Page