Watch Your Step

One of our great pleasures here in our little corner of Florida is watching the wildlife, of which there is plenty given that we are on an island bordered by the Gulf of Mexico, the Ten Thousand Islands that stretch pretty much unbroken all the way to Key West, and the Everglades, which stretch pretty much unbroken all the way to Miami.

The dolphins cavorting endlessly out in the vast Gulf that we see from up high on our lanai, as balconies are called down here, are our favorites. Lots of seabirds – pelicans, ospreys, gulls, frigate birds – are zooming around, plunging head first into the water in search of lunch.

On our bike trips around the island we get to see tiny burrowing owls sitting on perches kindly provided to them in their protected, roped-off sections of yards and public green spaces. Likewise, lumbering gopher turtles can be seen crawling in and out of their holes, also in protected spaces.

We love them all. Stingrays, not so much.

F and I were taking a dip in the Gulf and coming in to shore, where ice-cold beers awaited us. I stopped to provide a hand to F at water’s edge – literally in ankle-deep water two steps from shore – when I felt a sharp pain in the side of my heel, just below the ankle bone.

I couldn’t see anything in the surf, but my immediate thought was SHARK ATTACK! I quickly realized that it was too shallow for Jaws to manifest its horrible self. Perhaps a baby shark or a nasty fish? I looked down and saw blood but no teeth marks, no chunk of flesh ripped out of my foot. Just a small, neat puncture wound oozing blood.

Did I mention the excruciating pain?

After washing the wound out as best I could, I hobbled up to my chair and examined it further. No barb was imbedded, but I couldn’t think of anything that could have punctured me except for a small stingray. And since my foot was now throbbing in pain, I guessed that poison had been injected.

Grabbing F’s phone, I Googled stingray sting reactions and, well, it ain’t good news. The sharp, excruciating pain? Check. Bleeding? Check. Wound becomes swollen and discolored? Check. Allergic reactions such as nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, muscle cramps, paralysis, seizures and potential death? Fortunately not, although all those symptoms sound like the side effects of some of those drugs they’re always hawking on TV and telling you to ask your doctor about.

So here I am, a few hours later, still alive, contemplating the ingestion of some liquid pain killer even though the pain has finally diminished, pondering the vagaries of life and wildlife and all the ways humans and animals interact. And thinking that for all this pain, I didn’t even get to write about how I survived a shark attack.