Recently I complained about the lack of nature near my office in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Well, on this cool overcast observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, I took a brief walk that put an end to that complaint.
The walk was occasioned by my own absentmindedness, I’m ashamed to admit. Knowing full well that today was a public holiday, I decided to head across the street to the public library to obtain, at long last, a library card. For the past week or so I’d been heading over there at lunch to read a chapter of Rex Appeal, the strange and disturbing story of the discovery of, and subsequent brouhaha surrounding, a T. Rex skeleton named Sue. by the members of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. It’s a gripping story, and one that I wanted to be able to read for more extended stretches than an all-too-brief lunch hour. But in order to do that, I need a library card, and, since I reside in Palm Beach County, I would need to prove that I work in Broward for them to issue me one. And since we only recently moved to this building, I had to wait until we got our pay stubs to show them the proper paperwork.
So, paystub with correct address in hand, I trucked over to the library, only to realize that of course the library was closed on this public holiday. Now I’ll have to wait until tomorrow, Inauguration Day, to find out what happened after the feds seized Sue. [The “outcome” of the story is already well known: the Field Museum in Chicago bought the skeleton at auction, enriching the landowner whose handshake turned out to be somewhat less than reliable for poor Neal Larson.]
Not knowing what else to do in the face of this monstrous reminder of my absentmindedness, I wandered around the immediate neighborhood for a little while. I wound up heading toward the river, which is the closest thing to nature I can imagine here. There’s also a little park along the way; a few live oaks and an acacia tree. As I was crossing the street to get to the park, out of the corner of my eye I saw a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk flash by in the opposite direction. It flew low across the road, then swooped up dramatically into a a small stand of trees planted on the sidewalk area in front of the museum of art. I took a sharp right to head over there, but my change of direction lacked the verticality of the hawk’s.
As I neared the trees, it flew off again, recrossing the road, headed back to the park, where it startled a Eurasian Collared-Dove into a clumsy escape flight. Not too clumsy, though; the hawk flew after it for a moment, but was unable to close, and gave up the chase.
As I made my way to the park, I had plenty of time to regret that I had violated one of the fundamental laws of the birder’s life: always, always have your binoculars with you when you’re outside! I was never able to see where the bird landed; my little walk around the park didn’t stir anything up. There’s a fountain at the park that has music playing most of the time, and the water pulses in time to the music. There are lights at the base of most of the live oaks, too, which must be a fairly pretty sight after dark. I wouldn’t kn0w, as I vacate the city as soon as possible; too much good stuff waiting for me at home to hang out watching pretty lights in a park.
Nevertheless, it was a reminder that there is such a thing as urban nature; you just have to be in the right place at the right time. And it would help to have a camera or binoculars with you when time and place coincide…