September/October 1999 Issue

Nature on Display
Southwest Florida’s environment is fully appreciated at Calusa Nature Center

St. Petersburg, Florida, residents Evan Yates and his mother have been busy nonstop while visiting Sanibel and Captiva for several days, but 3-year-old Evan is in the mood for a change. My 11-year-old daughter and I think of a perfect place to take them after Evan’s nap: Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium in Ft. Myers.
   Now in its 27th year, the private, nonprofit nature center offers visitors an education in the natural environment of Southwest Florida. Its museum, Audubon aviary, Indian village, trails, and planetarium are run by four full-time naturalists, a director, and an assistant director. Many interns also work there throughout the year. The facility sits on 105 acres of pine flatwoods on the east side of Ft. Myers.
   Front-desk volunteer Barbara Bacon hands us a nature center trail guide. She asks us to return the helpful guides, which describe nature center buildings, show trails and their lengths, and identify trees and other plants.
   The nature center also sponsors a wide variety of programs such as preschool story hours, night hikes, laser light shows, summer camps, and television meteorologists discussing Southwest Florida’s summer flooding, lightning, and hurricanes. During the school year, the nature center’s full-time naturalists do outreach programs on the birds of prey or reptiles of Florida.
   Visitors generally go through the nature center on their own but can pay extra for guided walks. Naturalists do animal presentations twice a day, usually with a baby alligator or crocodile and nonpoisonous snakes. The planetarium offers daily shows. Naturalist Jill Evans runs the astronomy shows using 21 slide projectors inside the planetarium’s 40-foot dome. She says plans are in the works for updating to video and laser discs. Admission to the planetarium is extra.
   As we enter the museum, it’s hard to know where to begin. We gravitate toward a tank with freshwater pond life, including turtles and a baby alligator about 18 inches long. A nearby tank houses a baby crocodile, which is about the same size. Helpful signs explain the differences between the two, noting that the crocodile has a long, skinny snout, is grayish green, and its upper and lower teeth stick out when its mouth is shut.
   A table holds a book giving tips on “mosquito-proofing your yard.” A huge enclosed beehive, called “Dance of the Bees,” gives a fascinating view of a bee’s life. The Chilean rose-haired tarantula looks rather frightening, but it is described as being “fairly harmless.” A chest with pullout trays holds countless specimens of beautiful butterflies. Nearby, Evan doesn’t want to stop playing with a wooden sea-life puzzle.
   The snake exhibit is fascinating and its glass cages include a red rat snake, an Eastern diamondback rattler, and a venomous dusky pygmy rattler. Visitors can touch the many snakeskins that have been shed. A black, red, and yellow Eastern coral snake looks as if it could be plastic. A venomous cottonmouth is all curled up, and a sign on the Florida kingsnake cage notes that it eats other snakes.
   We wander onto the museum’s outdoor back deck, which has a fossilized half of a baleen whale skull that was found on Ft. Myers Beach. Nearby is a manatee skeleton. There are also rows and rows of cages full of mice, which are fed to the snakes, small alligators, and small birds of prey. A sign explains that starting with one pair of mice, if all future generations would survive and continue to breed, would produce 15,000 mice in one year.
   Just outside the museum are two big alligators housed in a fenced area. A gopher tortoise sits in safety on the other side of the fence. Evan, meanwhile, is captivated by huge, colorful butterflies that are painted on the outside of the museum
It’s not a far walk to the large aviary, whose inhabitants are permanently injured. Summer intern Rhonda Roth, from the University of Wisconsin, is inside one of the cages, getting ready to feed the birds. “These are raptors, which are big birds of prey that have powerful talons,” she tells us. “The bald eagle’s talons exert a thousand pounds of pressure. We also have vultures, which technically are not in the raptor group. See how that turkey vulture has a red head like a turkey?”
   Most of the birds have had wing amputations. A red-tailed hawk has a feather deformity, which nature center staffers think was possibly caused by poisoning. A big, beautiful female bald eagle is missing a wing, but no one knows why.
   Naturalist Laura Wewerka, who has worked at the nature center since 1992, says that because the birds are unable to hunt on their own, feeding time consists of giving them dead rats. The rats are covered with a yellow stain, which is from liquid vitamins.
   The center buys the dead rats, as well as some dead mice, from a Gainesville, Florida, company called Gourmet Rodent. “The mice are for our snakes, which do have a cushy life,” says Wewerka. “We’re pretty protective of them. The mice are already dead when we give them to the snakes, so the snakes won’t get bitten.”
   “Bad birdy!” shouts Evan as the bald eagle begins to eat a dead rat.
Near the aviary is a caged area for a bobcat that was undernourished as a kitten and has a hip deformity. Wild bobcats roam the property, but the caged cat is unable to run and thus is a permanent resident.
   A bit farther down the path is the Indian village, comprised of chickees, thatched structures built by Seminole Indians. Nearby, several large posters tell the story of the Calusa Indians, the nature center’s namesake tribe who lived in Southwest Florida from about 900 AD to 1700 AD.
   It’s getting near dinnertime for everybody. As we walk back toward the museum, we see Roth feeding the alligators. She throws a dead pigeon to one, and the alligator lunges at it so fiercely that we instinctively jump back a bit. “It is scary when it’s thrown to them, isn’t it?” Roth asks, while the ’gator drags its dinner into the water.
   As if anticipating our next question, Roth notes: “We feed them whatever is thawed out for the day, be it pigeons, fish, turkey necks. But we can’t stress enough how people must never feed alligators. When that happens, whenever they see people, they think food.”
   Calusa Nature Center is home to more than 50 animals. Keeping all of them fed and healthy is quite expensive, so the center appeals to visitors and the community to become “adoptive parents” and donate money to help care for the animals.
   Most of the funding for the nature center comes from admission charges, membership fees, grants, and fund-raising. A big fund-raiser is its Halloween Walk, held annually on the grounds during the last week and a half of October. Many of the exhibits also have local sponsors.
   The nature center is about to close for the day and we have a quick look around the museum gift shop. In addition to books, stationery, and jewelry, it sells birdseed, honey from LaBelle, a wooden kit for making a model tarantula, and the ever-popular Sanibel-Captiva Nature Calendar.
   Roth walks by, this time carrying a strange-looking iguana on her shoulder. “He’s Guac, short for Guacamole, and it’s a sad story,” she says. “Most of our animals never get named because they’re still wild and not pets. But Guac is our pet and we don’t put him on display.” Guac’s twisted body and patches of flaking skin are signs that he didn’t get enough calcium when he was young, says Roth. “Guac is a good example for people thinking of keeping an exotic pet. If you’re going to do it, make sure you do a lot of research.”
   For information on the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, call 941/275-3435 or log on to its Web site at www.calusanature.com. Admission is $4 over the age of 12, $2.50 for ages 3-12, and free under 3. Hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 275-3435. 3450 Ortiz Avenue, near the intersection of Colonial Boulevard, and Six Mile Cypress Parkway in Ft. Myers.

By Libby Grimm