Myt h: Alligators are always prowling for prey. Reality: Alligators generally eat once a week but can go for months without food. If Shealy and Tigertail are founts of local knowledge, Mike Owen is the Dr. Science of the Glades. A biologist at Fakahatchee Strand State Park, he crows with discovery, chortles with laughter, and gets contagiously excited over cypress knees (root forms poking above the water) and snail kites (endangered raptors that feed on apple snails) in a nonstop stream of inspired eco-consciousness on the Strand’s swamp walks. “There,’’ he raised a long measuring stick to a wisp frailer than a pine needle protruding from a tree. “A ghost orchid.’’ We forgot the mystery water that was up to our thighs. All crowded close and cameras flashed. It was the very spot where Owen and fellow staffers found collector John Laroche poaching rare orchids, a case that launched Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief.’’ My th: The Ghost Orchid is named for its white flower. Reality: The “ghost’’ in this orchid is its leafless form and chlorophyll-filled roots that make it practically invisible 52 weeks a year. When it blooms, the flowers look like an apparition suspended in mid-air. “At first, people see a flat, almost featureless terrain. After three hours they walk away awestruck,’’ kayak outfitter Charles Wright said in Chokoloskee, the epicenter of author Peter Matthiessen’s “Killing Mister Watson,’’ on the Glades’ western rim. Every local I met over 30 years old had wistful memories of a Florida like this, where terra firma vaporizes into the Ten Thousand Islands of bone-white sand beaches flocked with Calusa Indian artifacts and shells. Most had mixed hopes for the Everglades’ restoration. “The most ambitious environmental rescue ever attempted by man’’ is how Richard Grosso, Everglades Law Center counsel, described the 30-year super-project approved by Congress in 2000; not because of the science, which is well understood, but because of the choices. A near total silence explodes with the flap of 300 wading bird wings. “It changes lives,’’ said Wright. Patricia Borns can be reached at patriciaborns@comcast.net.
