Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Friday, November 2, 2007

Florida Everglades


One of my favorite places on the planet is the Florida Everglades. We took a family vacation there in 1988--ate tuna noodle casserole in our tent at one of the Everglades campgrounds on Thanksgiving, and took lots and lots of hikes. My boys had just turned 3 and 7, and Katie was about to turn 5. The highlight of the entire long trip (which included a few days at Disneyworld and several days in Washington, DC, visiting the zoo and lots of museums and seeing real dinosaur bones!) was the Everglades bathrooms. When we returned home, the first thing the kids told their grandparents about was that there were frogs in the bathroom. We came up with a song about them that we sang a lot on the way home. It had a bazillion verses but I can remember only two:
There are tree frogs in the sink, in the sink. There are tree frogs in the sink, in the sink. Some are purple, green and pink, And their big eyes sometimes wink. There are tree frogs in the sink, in the sink. There's a tree frog in the toilet, in the toilet. There's a tree frog in the toilet, in the toilet. Please don't flush or you could spoil it For the tree frog in the toilet. There's a tree frog in the toilet, in the toilet.
The Everglades is truly a national treasure. A few years ago I read news stories about the huge federal and state focus on protecting and restoring the Everglades. But out of sight, out of mind, apparently. Here's a disheartening story from today's New York Times.