franandaj
I'm so happy, I could BOUNCE!
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
We arose early, got dressed, and headed to breakfast. It’s always nice to stay in an Embassy Suites and get my ham, cheese and onion omelet cooked to order.
I have similar thoughts, but I ask them to toss everything into my omelet, except the jalapenos. Somehow I didn't think you would go for that....
And yet, as I contemplated our itinerary for the day, I couldn’t help but feel an involuntary shudder.
Dun, dun, dun....
Death awaits beyond its borders…with sharp, pointy, nasty teeth.
I see what you did there.
It was November of 1985. I was 11 years old. We were on a family vacation—you know the type: Mom and Dad pack everyone into the station wagon, we go driving for hours on end in the middle of nowhere, eating crappy PB&J sandwiches for lunch and fighting with your brothers for the tail-gunner seats that face backwards in the back of the wagon. You know, the kind of trip nobody takes anymore. But back then it was all the rage.
Funny, my family never did that. My parents just dressed us up, threw us on a plane back to my Grandparents in New England for a month.
Giant, mutated, bloodthirsty mosquitoes. The kind of mosquitoes that eat DEET for breakfast. They were everywhere, swarming, attacking every inch of exposed skin.
You know it's funny, while everyone else around me gets eaten alive by mosquitoes, they pay no attention to me. I think it's the wine.
We resorted to mad dashes between cover, hoping to finally get a break when we got to our room in the lodge for the night.
It was not to be. The monsters were already inside.
I remember the mosquitoes constantly buzzing in my ear, the relentless attacks, the cries of people being carried off by the swarms in the middle of the night...it was a trauma that an 11-year-old boy should never have had to face.
Heck! Even a 53 year old woman shouldn't have to face that kind of terror.
I’d been minding my own business, sharpening my machete, when they came to me with a request: they wanted to see an alligator. In the wild.
Go to Coronado Springs, they have one living in the lake there.
“We’ll make it worth your while,” they said. “We know a place. A place just a ways north of here. The happiest place on earth, in fact. They have Dole Whips.
Be our guide. Take us safely through the Everglades. Show us a gator. In return, you’ll have more Dole Whips than you could ever imagine.”
Liars! They're all Liars!
“What the $%&@ is this?” I asked. I grabbed the bottle. Some kind ofSnakeEssential Oil.
“This is better than insect repellent,” Julie replied. “This changes your body’s chemistry so that it smells differently to mosquitoes, and they don’t want to feed on you.”
I tell you wine works for me, and rarely do I spend $80 a bottle. More like $13 a box!
We saw no gators. In fact, we didn’t see much of anything. Although the Everglades is one of the more famous national parks in the U.S., I think it’s wise to temper your expectations when visiting. This is not really a park for scenery. It’s more of a park for nature/ecology geeks.
Or take the airboat!
In the years since I’d been here, they’d closed the lodge. Ostensibly, it was for hurricane damage, but I knew the truth. It was a cover-up. They didn’t want anyone to know of its horrific past.
What we found was…magical. Something even more rare than alligators.
We’d found a family of manatees.
That's really cool. But how were you so sure they were a family? It could have been a bachelorette party, a merry band of theives, or a group of young blondes and brunettes, all between sixteen and nineteen and a half....
There was a high-pitched buzz near my ear. Then another. I felt something graze my neck, and swatted blindly at it. They’d found us.
Definitely run!
“Just go!” Julie shouted. “Save yourselves!” I might have added that last part.
Just about the time my life finished flashing before my eyes, Julie let fly a vicious right cross. She caught me square in the left cheek. The sound of the blow reverberated around the room.
Sarah, David and Scott gasped, and stood bolt upright, jaws dropped. “Whoa,” said Dave.
It's serious now!
The Swedish family stared in shock. “WhØa,” they said.
OK this was the BEST joke of the story!
Drew stood up in his car seat and began to lower his pants.
“What the—?” I began.
Julie started scrambling in a panic. “He never went potty!” she shouted.
“No! Don’t open the doors!” Julie shouted. She fished around in the front seat and came up with an empty Chick Fil-A soda cup. She passed it back to Sarah, who held it in place while Drew re-filled the cup. Julie grabbed the cup from Sarah, slid down her window barely enough for an opening, and dumped it out before raising the window again in one smooth motion.
OK this is one BIG reason I never became a Mom!
You might think I’m exaggerating, or that they’re just mosquitoes. That maybe I’m delusional, or we didn’t really face all that much danger. You might not believe me when I say I’ve been lobbying Congress to firebomb this place into oblivion. You might even think I’m making it up.
Yeah? Well, you’ve never been to Flamingo.
No, I haven't, but I'm not sure how many times I've actually been bitten by them. Spiders love me, but mosquitoes hate me.