Happy New Year!

Poster about Mary's work

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks hanging out with our dear friend Mary Rice in Fort Pierce, Florida. Mary was an old friend of Liz’s parents and some of you may know her from her summers in Friday Harbor and her long association with the Friday Harbor Labs. She’s a local celebrity here, the founder and emeritus scientist of the Smithsonian Marine Station and Ecosystems Exhibit at Fort Pierce, a world-class marine research facility. Mary gave us behind the scenes tours of both facilities and we especially enjoyed the Ecosystems Exhibit, the part of the Marine Station that is open to the public. This unique aquarium presents the several habitats of the surrounding Indian River Lagoon. Check out their Face Book page for a glimpse into their important work.

 

Mary, still a productive scientist at age 87, never stops teaching, and Janna is trying to wrap her non-scientific mind around the importance of Sipunculans, Mary’s lifelong professional interest. Mary also never stops learning and we’ve had a couple of great expeditions with her, including a boat ride through the St. Lucie Aquatic Preserve with an experienced guide. Here we saw turtles, alligators, a manatee and many birds including the spectacular show of a female Anhinga eating a fish nearly as big as herself. To do this she speared it, beat it on the bank, then turned the fish around to swallow it head first.

 

Our other big expedition was a full day trip to the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve. We loaded up Lilypad with lunch supplies and drove 50 miles due west, into this palmetto prairie, where we climbed aboard the “prairie buggy”. We saw hundreds of birds including stately Wood Storks, Great Egrets, Cattle Egrets, Kestrels, Sandhill Cranes, Boat-tailed Grackles, Crested Caracaras and Eastern Meadowlarks. The tour was delayed while we watched a gopher tortoise laboriously dig and then abandon an egg-laying hole in the middle of the road.

Florida is known as the "Lightning Capital of the US" with more deaths and injuries than all other states combined, and this prairie experiences many of those strikes. The lightening sets off fires resulting in this area being completely burned at least once every couple of years throughout history. But now lightening fires are managed, and all areas are systematically burned by the park rangers, preserving the native habitat and eliminating grasses and other invasive plants. An interesting part of the tour was an inspection of a recent burn.  The young female ranger, who obviously loves taking care of this land, turns out to also be the “Burn-Boss” and we learned a lot about how it’s done. She told us the tortoise is the real prairie hero because all creatures from small mammals to snakes crowd into their burrows during a fire. 

We are leaving Mary on Monday to see other parts of Florida, but will be back in a few weeks to spend a little more time with her before heading north. Oh and did we mention that we had a lovely  Christmas with Mary including her treat of a Christmas dinner at the Pelican Yacht Club and a fantastic performance of the Nutcracker Suite by the State Ballet Theatre of Russia. We are relaxing at home with Mary today, bringing in the New Year with good company and good food.

We wish all our readers, friends and relations, the best for 2014.