At first, it was a little awkward, but after I got accustomed to
keeping my eyes closed in front of the whole class, I could relax and just listen.
The many times I had previously visited the Everglades, it had never occurred to
me that one very important aspect of the Everglades is the calming sounds it
produces. I then remembered that many people come to the Everglades not to learn
about it or enjoy its views, but to get away from the chaos of the city. With my
eyes closed and my classmates quiet, I felt I was by myself. Nothing could come
between me and the nature surrounding me. I heard a little bird in the distance,
its chirp muffled by the leaves fiercely rustling in the wind; it reminded me of
one of those CDs that people buy to relax or fall asleep. This "CD," though, would
never be heard again: in my mind I had captured the unique music made by nature at
that precise moment. When I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom, turned the
light off, and closed my eyes once more. I wanted to see if I could remember those
sounds: I knew they would make me eager to return to class in two weeks. My
experiment was a success.
I can only imagine the feelings of the first explorers of the
Everglades when they got to these majestic lands. Native Americans had already been
living there for millennia when the Everglades was "discovered," and had grown
accustomed to the music it made. Yet, the new explorers probably had not seen or
heard anything similar in their lives. When they closed their eyes, they would
have heard nature yet untouched by the hands of humankind: hundreds, maybe even
thousands, of birds calling each other, alligators bellowing under a cool shade,
frogs imitating crickets and pigs, and, of course, the soft wind making waves on
the sawgrass and then softly cooling their faces. It must have been glorious! Most
of these things can still be heard today, but less frequently. As people hunted
down animals, drained the Everglades, and developed cities, they took away many
key elements of this ecosystem. Some, like the birds, are still struggling to
achieve stable numbers of population that would guarantee the survival of future
generations of their species.
When Audubon set foot in South Florida to study the different
species of birds he observed "great flocks of wading birds flying overhead toward
their evening roosts .... They appeared in such numbers to actually block out
the
light from the sun for some time 1." It
seems unimaginable nowadays that the number of birds would eclipse the sun in
such a way. In the
late 19th and early
20th
centuries, wearing bird's feathers on hats became very fashionable. Of course,
in order to acquire these feathers, hunters would have to kill the birds, pluck
the
feathers out, and (as we learned in Killing Mister Watson) very often
leave the
birds' corpses rotting on the ground. This business became very profitable: In
the first half of the 20th century certain types of feathers were worth more
than
their weight in gold. The more beautiful plumes are always acquired during the
birds' mating season. By displaying exquisite, delicate plumes, males would attract
females and keep their species going. It is not surprising to discover that this
season was also the bird hunter's favorite. Upon acquiring the feathers of adult,
mating birds, these hunters not only killed the adults, but left the chicks to
starve to death. Very often, vultures would get to the chicks before they could
die and ate them alive, piece by piece. Obviously, most of the wealthy women
displaying these feathers on their hats could not even imagine the damage they
were causing to an entire ecosystem. Thankfully, fashions changed and plume-wearing
decreased. The Everglades, though, had already suffered so many losses of its
birds and habitats, that even today one cannot hope to see or hear but less than
ten percent of the number of birds there existed at the beginning of the 1900s.
The mellifluous music I heard on Friday while closing my eyes was devoid of many
bird songs that would have been around me had humans never tampered with this
fragile ecosystem.
Other animals have suffered similar fates. Alligators, for
example, were hunted for decades not only for their meat, but for their pelts.
The thick skin from their bodies made excellent and durable purses, boots, and
belts. Baby alligators were very often skinned and used whole, head and all, to
adorn purses. Their eyes replaced by little glass balls so as not to show their
pain and suffering. Fortunately, alligator hunting was eventually banned when
the Everglades National Park was established. What would have been the future of
these regal reptiles without the Park? Sixty years ago alligators were extremely
rare. Even scientists, researching the Everglades would have trouble finding them.
Daniel Beard, in his accounts, wrote that in a year and a half of constant research
in the Everglades, he only found four adult alligators. Nowadays, alligators are
considered the rare success story of the Everglades since there are more than a
million living. Yet, people still do not seem to understand that animals need
their skins to exist. We do not have the right to take an indispensable part of
the body to luxuriate ourselves. Fur coats, crocodile shoes, and leather purses
are still being made and sold. It might change some minds if, along with the
purchase, the customer had to take home the offspring of the animals killed to
care for them or the bloody remains of the skinned corpses. Maybe then people
would see the harsh reality of using nature to meet our wants.
It is disheartening to think of all the damage that humans
have caused to the Everglades. Couldn't Governor Broward, for example, put profits
aside and for a moment close his eyes to listen to the sounds around him? Maybe
if he had, he would have discovered that those sounds would never be replicated
out of the Everglades once the Everglades were gone. Maybe someone else would
have ruined the ecosystem anyway. We always try to manipulate nature not only
to serve our needs, but mostly our wants. It seems very hard for many people
to let nature take its course. I wonder oftentimes if my children will ever
get to enjoy the little that is left of the Everglades. Will they, one day, come
to the same spot I was standing, close their eyes, and listen to nature as it was
intended to be?
1
Proby, Kathryn Hall. Audubon in Florida. With Selections from the Writings
of John James Audubon.University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. 1974
