Panther 27

By J. Curry Druz

On a remote hammock in the heart of the Florida Everglades, a young wildlife biologist discovers the remains of one of the endangered Florida panthers she was monitoring. Her efforts to determine the cause of its death are met with frustration until she meets a troubled engineer who is seeking his own answers. Together, they are immersed into a tangled world of deception as they work to expose the truth about the animals demise against a backdrop of swampland wilderness and political jungles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524566357

J. Curry Druz

The author is a native Floridian who grew up on the outskirts of Miami at the edge of the Everglades; he spent much of his adolescent and teenage years exploring and fishing in that vast, watery wilderness. A retired engineer residing in Central Florida, he returns there often to reflect on its wild natural beauty and the desperate battle to save the unique land from extinction.

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Copyright © 2017 by James Andrews.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016920120

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-6637-1

      Softcover      978-1-5245-6636-4

      eBook         978-1-5245-6635-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/17/2016

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

In memory of my loving mother, who prayed that I would write,

and my father, who inspired me.

Chapter 1

It is a land of water: where water is and where it isn’t—and when it’s there and when it isn’t. One can see for many miles across its horizontal terrain; changes in land elevation are measured in millimeters, not feet. The life that exists in this dynamic landscape has adapted to a yearly cycle of tinder-dry savannahs and submerged shallow swamps.

This land lies on the extreme tip of a three-hundred-mile thumb-like projection of North America that juts southward into the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea. Here, the maritime trade winds from the south interact with continental air masses; here, the onshore sea breezes that develop on both sides of the peninsula collide.

In this transitional clime, there are only two seasons. From June until September, the sun’s near-direct rays bake the land, creating columns of rising steamy vapor that mixes with the swirling vortex of the interacting sea breezes above. This saturated air rises and encounters cooler overlying layers, where it condenses, forming puffy, white cumulus clouds; this, in turn, generates more heat that drives the moist column farther upward until the drops of water become so massive that the atmosphere can no longer cling to them; they succumb to the gravity and fall to the ground as rain. In the end, the thunderstorms cover the land and drench the prairie.

For the rest of the year, when the sun’s direct rays move to the Southern Hemisphere, the heat catalyst is diminished, and the thunderstorm engine only idles. Drier continental air from the north filters southward, and rainfall is sporadic. It is not so much as cool; it is simply not as hot. The water deposited by the storms of the wet season evaporates, but there is not sufficient rainfall to sustain water levels. The land slowly dries through the winter and into the spring months. But as this cycle nears its completion and the solar radiation creeps northward toward the Tropic of Cancer, the sea breezes grow stronger, the land heats more rapidly, and the throttle for the thunderstorm engine is pushed forward.

The landscape beneath this seasonal sky is built on a flat slab of sedimentary rock formed by the skeletons of millions of small sea creatures that flourished in the submarine meadows of an ancient shallow sea; it is one of the last areas of the earth to emerge from the retreating sea levels spawned by the Ice Age. As the water withdrew, vestiges of the sea remained in pockets and depressions of the terrain. One such area was a shallow swale, fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long, with a north-to-south major axis orientation. At the north end of this lay a large bowl of seawater. As the land slowly dried and the modern climate evolved, rains began to fall and slowly freshen the residual seawater. When the bowl overflowed, the water spilled into the swale, where it trickled its way southward to the sea at the southern tip of the peninsula.

Slowly, plants became established in the swale, specially adapted to the cyclical rise and fall of the water and resistant to the lightning-induced fires in the dry season; most notable of these is saw grass. In time, vast meadows of this sedge covered the swale, forming dense stands that stretched to the horizon—sprouting from the forming soil, rising skyward to capture the sun’s energy, and then returning to the ground in death, adding more material to the growing soil. Where the saw grass was the thickest and retarded the natural movement of the water, silt and debris accumulated, and small hammocks formed where different plants, not tolerant of long-term inundation, became established: custard apple, maple, and cabbage palm. In time, the swale resembled a watery grassland dotted with shrub-covered islands.

Flanking either side of the swale on slightly higher ground, dramatically different vegetation types became established. On the east, a rim of lime rock forms a narrow margin paralleling the coastline. There are a few rifts in this barrier that allow water to escape the waterlogged marsh and flow to the Atlantic Ocean through small rivers and streams. Slash pine, wire grass, and palmetto cover this rocky area, similar to landforms farther to the north. To the west, the barrier is broader and sloped very gently from west to east; it is dominated by vast tracts of pond cypress. This wide plateau is dissected by slough-like streams and dotted with slash pine, oaks, and cabbage palms at slightly higher elevations. In the sloughs, maple, gum, and tropical species flourish.

At the southern terminus of the swale, where the freshwater meets the surrounding sea, brackish swamps were formed with thousands of small islands filling the shallow delta. They were quickly covered by tropical mangrove trees that are adapted to the varying salinity of this mixing zone. Heavy rains over the lands to the north send more freshwater to this delta, stemming the migration of the salt-tolerant mangroves northward. But droughty conditions allow the mangroves to move northward, threatening to displace the saw grass of the swale.

The early peoples that probed the wilderness adapted to the changing landscape to a large degree. They constructed primitive canals through the swamps to ease their access to remote areas for hunting and for intertribal trade, as well as mounds of discarded shell and bone that created rises in the monotonous flatness of the terrain. They also learned that fire was an important tool for driving wildlife to ambush sites, and for clearing land and establishing new plants that attracted game. Likewise, the early western explorers only touched at the land’s perimeter. It was considered a formidable no-man’s-land full of danger but lacking treasure or anything of strategic value. As such, the land remained unchanged and in equilibrium for centuries, with only fires and occasional tropical storms to upset the balance.

It all began to change in the nineteenth century. Florida was now part of the United States: a new country set on expansion and manifest destiny. Surveyors were sent and began inscribing names for the landforms they saw onto maps. They named the swale Everglades and the shallow bowl to the north Lake Okeechobee, and the broad plateau to the west was called Big Cypress Swamp. Slowly, the migration of northerners into South Florida began; those who came settled along the coast. Small settlements were built near army posts on the small rivers that breached the rocky eastern fringe of the Everglades. Few of these hardy souls ventured to the interior, and then only for short explorations or hunting trips. But some of those who did view the vast saw grass prairie and clench thick wads of the underlying black soils in their hands could not help but see rich farmland in a frost-free paradise and acres upon acres of land, free for the taking.

It was this vision that directed America’s spirit toward Florida. The state created a governmental department to deal with submerged lands in its jurisdiction; wholesale tracts of this swampland were brokered in speculative markets; the drainage of the Florida swampland became a topic of discussion in boardrooms, executive clubs, and mansion parlors across the nation. As the interest became feverish, the investors lined up, and when the raised capital and guarantees were sufficient, technology took over. A decade before the close of that century, the first massive dredges were clawing channels into the wet prairies, forever changing the characteristics of the Everglades watershed.

Canals and ditches were dug to drain the shallow marshes and convey the flow to the coast or to Lake Okeechobee; meanders in rivers were straightened and channelized to streamline water flow. The swampland began to dry, and the speculators began selling the land to ranchers and farmers. By the beginning of the twentieth century, cattle were grazing the dried prairies to the north while muck farmers were raising vegetables along the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee.

But when the summer rains came, runoff from the reclaimed lands now barreled down these canals and channelized rivers rather than flooding the marshes and seeping through the soil. The volume of this channelized flow quickly filled Lake Okeechobee and flooded the communities around it and downstream, where drainage canals emptied into the sea. During the dry season, fires on the now drier prairie darkened the skies and threatened the newly established towns and villages. Engineered systems to address this problem were installed by the state. Levees and dikes were built around the lake to increase its storage capacity. Pumps stations were built to regulate water flow in and out of the lake and through the canals that conveyed the water to the coast. Large tracts of undeveloped Everglades land were purchased; called conservation areas, they were surrounded by levees and used as reservoirs for the water-balancing act that was now required.

Irrespective of these issues, the development of South Florida exploded. Railroads were built, and thousands moved in, inspired by a boomtown mentality and attracted by the mild South Florida winter. Onetime trading posts became cities: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Naples. Highways were built across the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp: the Tamiami Trail in the south and Alligator Alley to the north. Most of the agricultural lands around the lake were converted from family-owned plots raising vegetables to corporate conglomerates producing sugarcane and landscape sod. The water-balancing system was continuously modified; more canals were dug, more pump stations were added, and more conservation land was purchased. In recent decades, the Everglades philosophy has shifted; rather than trying to manage the water, the emphasis now is to restore its original natural flow.

Battle lines have been drawn between those who desire to return the Everglades to the paradise that early man must have known, and those who sustain their livelihoods and ambitions from the ecosystem’s lifeblood: its water.

Very little, if any, of the prehistoric land of water exists anymore. Vestiges remain in parks and preserves interspersed throughout the lands it once dominated. The plants and wildlife surviving in these remnant tracts are oblivious to the political warfare under way. Their fate is to be born, exist, and die in that place.

It is now mid-June, and the evidence of the dry season blankets the Everglades’s expanse. Fires have been scorching much of the saw grass prairie, consuming the peaty muck beneath and exposing pinnacles of lime rock jutting through charred mats of moss and algae that thrived in the shallow water of the previous wet season. Scattered throughout, pools of dark water form in the limestone, deepened by dissolution of the rock and the sharp claws of the alligator. These gator holes are an oasis that attract thirsty animals from the surrounding parched land.

The coming day begins with an orange-yellow tinge diffusing upward into the dark sky of the eastern horizon. Swirls abound in the pool as the gar and mudfish jostle like crowded passengers on a rush-hour subway, desperately gasping for the pittance of available oxygen and congregating for protection from the alligators in whose hunting ground they dwell. With each twinkle of sunlight, the reptiles emerge from their lairs in the cattails and rushes that line the pond, their snouts, eyes, and powerful tails protruding through the water’s surface. They glide slowly into the mass of prey that move frantically from their paths, only to encounter another hungry beast. Jaws snap, and the water explodes across the once serene waterscape. The din attracts many birds that join the minnows and bream, gobbling the bits of flesh scattered by this carnage.

Tucked within the tangles of reeds and saw grass on the pond’s edge, barely visible with its tawny coat of fur, a female panther crouches near a beaten-down game trail that twists through the dense stalks of saw grass and cattails. It patiently awaits the prey that regularly travel to the pond at dawn to drink. The cat is motionless, its pointed ears raised to capture the slightest sound of a snapping twig, its nostrils constantly testing the morning air. A sudden flash of dark brown penetrates the sameness of the tangled jungle, and a barely audible short squeak signals the approaching juvenile hog. The panther crouches lower and stares intensely at the trail, its shoulder and haunch muscles twitching in excitement. Constantly smelling the heavy morning air for signs of danger, the hog moves cautiously past the hiding cat to the pond’s edge. It hesitates briefly and scans the pond for movement. But the smell of the water and its desperate thirst are overwhelming, and it lowers it snout into the water.

Sensing its prey’s vulnerability, the panther leaps from the brush onto the unsuspecting hog, its front paws tearing through the hog’s hind quarter. The beasts become a ball of tumbling chaos; the cat trying to sink its fangs into the hog, the hog trying to recover from the panther’s initial thrust and regain its footing. The hog’s skin rips, and the cat’s grip is lost. In an instant, they are on their feet and staring at each other a mere two feet apart. The panther snarls in frustration at the motionless wounded hog, one of the cat’s claws hanging from the torn porcine hide. With a sudden pivot, it darts straight into the cat’s belly, knocking it from its feet, and then turns and runs toward the brush. But the recovered cat leaps again at the grunting animal, the blow knocking the hog forward into the pond. With its snout and ears breaking the water surface, it swims desperately for the shore where the panther stands in wait. It panics and veers from its course; first right, then left, then right again. Suddenly, with the high-pitched squeal that startles even the panther, the hog’s head vanishes from view; only bubbles and choppy waves disturbing the pond surface.

The panther sits in a relaxed crouch, gazing at the pond and panting heavily for many minutes, but the hog never resurfaces. The sun is by now rapidly warming the land as the cat sits and cleans the relics of the early battle from its body, licking its paws and shoulders repeatedly. There is blood oozing from its mouth, as a canine has apparently dislodged from its jaw during the fight with the hog. The bright sunlight causes its eyes to blink; standing to its feet and taking one last gaze at the pond, it turns and slowly walks along the game trail toward the shade of a nearby hammock.

Many miles eastward, as the morning sun rises and focuses enormous energy onto the cobalt-blue Gulf Stream, the molecules of seawater become excited and break the chemical bonds that hold them together. One by one, they separate from the watery mass and join the tropical air and are carried westward by southeast trade wind and the increasing onshore sea breeze.

The winds push this moisture westward toward the southeast Florida coast; as the water shallows and land is approached, more of the sun’s energy is reflected upward at this moisture, propelling it farther aloft into the cooler air above. The cumulus clouds form as the now cooled water molecules condense and continue the steady westward procession over the coastal urban lands, where much more heat is reflected from the surfaces of asphalt and concrete. The columns of saturated air rise even farther as this air collides head-on with moist rising air from the west coast sea breeze. By noon, the thunderheads start forming over the Everglades.

Such a storm drifts over a hammock of gumbo-limbo trees no more than five miles west of the encroaching suburbs of Miami, beyond the levee that separates the Everglades from civilization. With several cracks of thunder and sharp gusts of cool downdraft air that rattle the fronds of the cabbage palms, it begins to rain. The drops beat against the leaves and soon saturate the ground, bathing the resting panther as it cowers in a thicket of myrtles. It is cooling and refreshing to the tired cat; this morning’s hunt, as have several others, proves unsuccessful. The cat yawns, lays its head down upon the wet carpet of leaves, and purrs itself to sleep. At dusk, it will stir and go back to the pond and again try to fill its yet unsatisfied appetite.

Chapter 2

She was startled by the first drop. It hit the windshield of the taxicab with a loud splat, covering much of the sunbaked glass. Another drop followed, prompting her driver to turn on the wipers; and in an instant, she saw a wall of white rain envelop the southbound cab. The rain pounded the car roof, and a sudden clap of thunder followed a bright flash in the pitch-black sky. She looked at the driver, who was leaning forward toward the steering wheel, the muscles in his neck tense. The car slowed as the rain intensified; she could only think of childhood memories of Midwest tornadoes she had experienced.

Though frightened, she was awed by the storm. When she had gotten into the cab, not an hour ago at the airport, it was sunny and stiflingly hot. It took only a brief walk from the terminal building to the air-conditioned taxi to bring beads of sweat to her forehead and cause the cotton clothes to stick to her skin. The drive through the stop-and-go traffic in South Miami had been under puffy white clouds that steadily blew westward across an azure sky. But she had noted a change the farther the car had traveled; the clouds grew in size and built upward. Now, the world around her was dark, wet, and terribly loud.

Breaking the silence in the car, she queried her intense driver, Is there something I can do or should know about? she said nervously.

Shaking his head, the dark-skinned man replied in his island staccato, No, missy. Jussa storm. I see okay; no worry now. It be over soon. You see.

She relaxed back into her seat and sighed. Well, if you say so.

Her driver was right. In a few moments, the rain began to ease, and she saw glimmers of light through the sheets of water pounding the road ahead. Then, as if a switch had been turned, the rain ceased as quickly as it had started, the sun again shining brightly in the southern sky. For the second time, she was startled. She thought she had been dreaming, but a glance over her shoulder through the car’s rear window projected reality; the sky behind them was black and etched by streaks of lightning. This is so strange, she thought.

The car drove for another twenty miles through terrain as flat as a dinner plate. The land around her was a monotone of grassy prairie speckled with clumps of green. But one thing was consistent about this landscape: it was wet. Ditches along the road were filled with black water, which blended into the background of prairies dissected by tortuous channels. The roadbed was nothing more than a slightly raised causeway of coarse asphalt in this ocean of plant life. She was impressed by the lush and verdant panorama unfolding in front of her eyes. Lily pads and water bonnets covered the water; birds of all sizes and colors flew over the marsh and crept through the vegetation protruding in the wet prairie. The books she had studied about her new home, the Everglades, fell short on their descriptions of the life she now witnessed. The farther the car journeyed, the more her excitement grew.

We gettin’ close now, missy! her more relaxed driver exclaimed. Only ten mile to go to da Flamingo town.

She pulled down the visor over the front window and checked her appearance in the mirror. She was not an overly vain person, but she was a professional, and she desired to convey that image in both appearance and words. Straightening her hair in the mirror, she noticed that the vegetation along the road had changed. A strange-looking and different kind of shrub became more dominant in the ditches, with dark green leaves overhanging a very strange trunk that resembled the dangling tentacles of an octopus. The farther south they traveled, the bigger these bushes got. Perplexed, she turned again to the driver and asked, What are those things? pointing at the ditch.

Mangroves, missy. We comin’ to da salty water.

Wet shrubbery and a few puddles were the only evidence of the thunderstorm that had drenched the landscape a few moments before. But the sun beamed in full glory, creating a steam bath atmosphere that greeted her as she stepped from the cab at the Flamingo headquarters of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. She suddenly felt like an alien; the few men ambling outside the building wore shorts and were shirtless. Opening the office door, she reported to her new boss, Ridley Baker, wearing her long khaki cotton pants, buttoned-down long-sleeve blouse, and a zipped-up wind breaker.

Hi. I’m Kirsten, she began, extending her hand to a seated manager. You must be Mr. Baker. The people in Atlanta said you’d be expecting me, so … well, here I am.

Oh, hello. Kristen, right? Baker replied as he rose from the sweat-moistened chair.

"No, sir, it’s Kirsten … r after i," she added nervously.

Walking around his desk, he turned to her and shook her hand, saying, Welcome to the paradise, Kirsten. You’re from up north, aren’t you?

Well, I’m originally from Chicago, but I’ve been living in Blair, Nebraska, for the last year.

Baker nodded and turned his attention to a satellite photograph of the Everglades on the wall. "Well, Kristen—I mean, Kirsten—as you are probably aware, you ain’t in Kansas no more. What you see up there is your new research lab, complete with high temperatures, stifling humidity, and untold numbers of snakes, bugs, and gators. Turning back to Kirsten with a barely disguised grin on his face, he added, Please, have a seat and tell me about yourself."

Kirsten pulled up a nearby wooden chair, making a quick examination of the boss’s office. There was a picture of a woman and two children on his desk; she supposed it was his family. On the wall, there were also pictures of men and a few women, doing what appeared to be job-related tasks: standing by four-wheel-drive vehicles, sloshing through swampland, and generally having a grand and glorious time. One picture showed some people standing around a panther sprawled upon the leaf-strewn ground and oblivious to anything.

She moved her eyes to the right of the picture and emitted a slightly audible gasp. Pinned to a piece of dark wood was the stretched skin of a snake—a snake with a yellow diamond-shaped pattern on a brown background. It stretched from near the ceiling to within a foot of the floor. A chill went through her as she gazed at the six-and-a-half-foot rattlesnake skin. Clearing her head, she turned to the now seated Baker.

"I was actually born in Chicago, sir. My dad is an attorney, and my mom stayed home and took care of my sister and me. I did well enough in high school to get a partial scholarship to Montana State University. I’d always wanted to work outdoors in nature, so I graduated with a degree in wildlife ecology. I wanted to stay out west and get a job, but my dad put a lot of pressure on me to go to law school. So off to the University of Chicago I went and spent the next three years working myself crazy to get a law degree. I finally did graduate and worked briefly for his firm in Des Plaines, but my heart was just not in it. Certainly, my mind was not in it … I failed the Illinois State Bar exam twice.

"I think my dad began to see my unhappiness, because he called me into his study one evening and apologized for putting so much emphasis on a career in law. By the end of our talk, he encouraged me to seek a career that better fit my own goals.

"That, Mr. Baker, was probably the happiest day I can recall. Within several weeks, I had interviews with various state and local conservation agencies, but my personal goal was a position with the Fish and Wildlife Service. I applied for every opening they posted and finally was offered a job at the DeSoto Bend National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa on the Missouri River. I was so happy to be in the woods again!

"After a year or so there, a colleague of mine mentioned a new program that was