Wondrous Birds—Our Keys Adventure

I must admit that until Audrey and I took a trip to the Florida Keys a few weeks ago, I had never seen a pelican up close. Then we went to an unusual tourist attraction called Robbie’s of Islamorada, where you could pay a fee to feed small fish to large hungry tarpon competing in an enclosed pool—if you could keep a flock of in-flying pelicans from trying to horn in on the food. Or you could save money and just observe the pelicans, which is what Audrey and I did. 

I don’t recommend Robbie’s very highly, but it is unique. And the pelicans are gentler and prettier than I thought they would be. Here are some I bonded with.

The scene was closer to one that involved Brett and some pigeons in Savannah when he was three. . .

. . .and less like Tippi Hedren’s ordeal in The Birds.

Before visiting Robbie’s, my total pelican experience revolved around a limerick that most of us have read or heard:

A wondrous bird is the pelican.

Its beak can hold more than its belican.

It can hold in its beak

Enough food for a week

And I don’t see how in the helican.

I pretentiously recited the limerick aloud to the birds and identified its creator—the humorist poet Ogden Nash. Wrong! 

I did some quick research and discovered that for oh-so-many years, Ogden Nash has been receiving credit for the work of another less acclaimed but well deserving comic poet and newspaper columnist named Dixon Lanier Merritt. When I discovered my error, you could have knocked me over with a (pardon the expression) feather.

Birds seem to be a big deal in the Florida Keys. In Key West, our next destination after Robbie’s, we encountered dozens of chickens roaming free on streets, sidewalks, and restaurant porches. What’s the story with these fowl, known as “Gypsy chickens”? No one knows for sure. But the chickens are allowed to roam free, and the crowing of the roosters not only greets the morning in Key West but all hours of the day. They fit right in with the Key West lifestyle. One island native explained the noisy chickens this way: “They’re like some of the people down here – they don’t know when to quit.”  

The pelicans and chickens were just two of the unusual things we encountered in the Keys. Some of the humans were pretty outrageous too!