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Part III: Night Falls Fast

Once she got her mask properly tightened, UD began the calm slow kick and arms-to-the-body stillness of snorkeling around The Danger. These weren’t the massive rounded coral reefs of Cozumel, teeming with fish, but they had their moments, and UD encountered a flock of cuttlefish.  She’d have called them elephant fish, because when they stare right in your face, the way these stared in UD‘s face, they look like flimsy little elephants.

PBS did a special about them because they’re “one of the brainiest, most bizarre animals in the ocean.”

The water was warm and shallow (pretty warm; UD wore a wetsuit), and the views, when you lifted your head from the water, were all light green waves and light green islands.  She could see around her because for the first time she had on a prescription mask.

Later, when she, as feared, lowered herself into a bobbing kayak with her partner already in it, UD handily slipped into her seat in the back, where she took charge of steering.

She steered pretty well, only once drifting into mangrove roots.

And she saw many varieties of that shag, or cormorant, that Elizabeth Bishop described in Cape Breton.

It was so quiet where they paddled.  The quiet, and the prehistoric pelicans, made you feel as though you’d fallen out of time into some antechamber of existence.

Back on board, we gathered to watch the famous Key West sunset, just the opposite of the soft ponderous Rehoboth dusk.  Here, the sun, a trembling bronze, all but hurled itself down into the horizon.

end of part three

Margaret Soltan, February 25, 2009 3:16PM
Posted in: snapshots from key west

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2 Responses to “Part III: Night Falls Fast”

  1. RJO Says:

    > And she saw many varieties of that shag, or cormorant, that Elizabeth Bishop described in Cape Breton.

    These would all be Phalacrocorax auritus, the only species in Florida (of roughly 30 worldwide). If you watch carefully, perhaps you will observe the distinctive behavior described by Christopher Isherwood:

    The common cormorant, or shag,
    Lays eggs inside a paper bag.
    The reason, you will see, no doubt,
    Is to keep the lightning out.
    But what these unobservant birds
    Fail to realize is that herds
    Of wandering bears may come with buns
    And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.

  2. RJO Says:

    And as I think of it, you may be seeing Anhingas also. They are freshwater cormorants, found inland and in mangrove areas rather than on the ocean (and so I tend not to think of them as cormorants, although that’s what they are). I don’t know the area first hand so don’t know if they occur in the salt water areas where you are.

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