Trailing Spouse Was Trailing Cranes This Morning

This morning I got up to see the whooping cranes. Since I live on the South Side - I figured it would be fun to get up at 5:30 and drive down to St. Marks to see the whopping cranes fly in from Wisconsin. As I drove down the Woodville Highway - I wondered how many of my fellow Tallahassans would brave the coldest morning of the year to see these giant birds arrive at their new winter home. They are real "snow birds" flying south for the winter - picking our community to stay a while.

After teaching earth science for all those years up north - it was time to check out one of my lesson plans in real life. The whooping crane is the "national bird" of the environment movement. I remember back in grade school that they were on the edge of extinction. The insecticide DDT caused the crane's egg shells to be too soft. An entire generation of environmentalists took on big industry to try to prevent extinction of the whooping crane.

Fast forward 50 years. DDT was banned and the whooping crane population was turning around and getting larger. Several whooping cranes were "summering" in Wisconsin. Now a group of environmentalists was trying to re-establish their migration pattern of "wintering" in Florida.

The neatest part is that the scientists that were working on this project would care for the cranes by dressing up in bird costumes. Even neater than that - they were being led south by an ultralight airplane "disguised" as a mother crane. It was this unusual pairing that had attracted me to St. Mark's this morning.

After a nice slow ride down Woodville Highway my car approached the Riverside Restaurant - close by to where people were told to assemble to see this strange fly over. Cars were making a slow U turn and heading back north. People were leaning out of car windows to say that the "flyby" was postponed.

For one quick second I thought of the news last night on TV - you know where a flock of birds was sucked into the engines of a jet - causing it to do a "water landing" in the Hudson River next to New York City. Surely - these two events weren't related in any way. But for one second it crossed my mind.

Probably tomorrow being a Saturday - the crowd in St. Marks will be bigger - and the traffic will be greater. I wonder how much pollution will be put into the air by us "environmentalists" on the way to watch a flocks of whooping cranes being led south to Florida for the winter by an ultralight airplane disguised as a mother snow bird. Two national news stories about birds and ariplanes in 24 hours. Only in America and only in the Big Bend of Florida - and I am happy that I retired from the science classroom to live here.