I grew up on the Indian River Lagoon, really the Banana River side, and the ocean side of that .We lived on the barrier bar just south of Cape Canaveral. The Spanish called it Cape Cane break. It was the 1960's and life was a great deal different then. I had a Southern gentleman for a father and two older brothers that I looked up to. My mother was an elegant woman who ruled the house and the English language, she would never have approved of the way I ended the last sentence.

What were then considered useless lands and wastelands are now recognized as wetlands. My own fascination of these swamps grew as I did. I grew to love this other world to see in it a life force that was unrivaled. It was in the swamps and marshes of the Indian and Banana River. We lived on the edge of a cove in the Banana River on the beach side. The old maps called this Shorty's pocket.

The Indian River Lagoon, as it has now come to be called, was the host to so much of the wildlife of Florida that I could only watch in amazement as it paraded by. The rafts of ducks that came through on the fall cold fronts are not there any more. The first thorough were the little green winged teal then came the mallards. Then the pintails and then the scaups were mixed with them all. Not now though, much of the fish and game that I saw then has now disappeared. I saw a teal this last year. One small individual from what were once thousands. The pintails have disappeared. Many of the mallards I see are the dishonest ones that no longer make the trip to the north and back. They prefer to hang out with the local Florida duck or the Mottled duck, spending the hot summers in our Florida marshes. They eat fish too, not the vegetarian diet they came to us with before. When you taste these lazy ducks you know right away, these are the fish eaters. The biologists call these feral ducks, I wonder how the ducks feel about the label.

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