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Everglades Guided
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Walking through the razor grass and muck is like wading through a field of small gray sea slugs or a bowl of chopped innards. It's the most off-putting thing about the tromp until Rob explains the importance of the glop that covers the bottom and floats on the surface.
As we move to the edge of a cypress dome, where Rob tells us the glop is called periphyton. It's an algae at the lowest level of the food chain that feeds snails and other critters, regrettable even the mosquito larvae.
Shuffling inside the cypress dome, I'm surprised to see a couple of red mangroves growing beside the trees, dozens of miles from the coast. Apparently they're the products of Hurricane Donna in the 1960s, which blew seeds so far inland.
Birds, understandably don't seem to appreciate our intrusion into the small, isolated forest; none are nearby. Thankfully, neither alligators nor any of the area's 27 types of snakes, 4 of them poisonous, are nearby either.
“If you come across a snake that doesn't want to get out the way, figure that it's poisonous,” advises Rob, who is always our point man.
The half-hour tromp ends uneventfully, as every Swamp Tromp should. The deep marl doesn't pull off any shoes, no one falls into the muck, and the mosquitoes must have already lunched because they are surprisingly scarce. While my shoes will recover, my muddy white socks will never be used again. Or at least not until my next Swamp Tromp.
Florida Wildlife Viewing Homepage
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