One Last Bike Ride

I went for a last bike ride to the Quiet Gardens yesterday afternoon, after spending most of the afternoon sorting and folding and packing all my stuff. I get on the plane to New York in a few hours but it still seems so unreal. All week people have been asking me if I’m excited to be going back to New Zealand and I always have to think, Wait, what? before I smile and go, Yeah! I am! Not really believing that I’m actually going, and feeling pretty much every other way I can think of other than “excited” right now. If last time was any indication I’ll start feeling that way about hour five into the flight to Auckland, about the third time they bring around the tea and the ice cream truck.

It was extra nice not to think about it for an hour, to cycle through the grapetrees along the path to the gardens and look at birds and trees for a while.

Banyan trees are just my favorite. There are a lot of things I find difficult about Miami but one thing I always miss and one thing that is always so good about being here is, like, the foliage. It’s my misfortune, I guess, that I happen to like to live in cities that feature pines or pohukutawa instead. Those are nice trees too, of course…but not like this beauty.

All the ponds are very low right now but these ibis seemed to still be enjoying themselves. This is the bird that reminds me of the island more than any other.

The sandhill crane family was around that day too, which I am taking as an obscure sort of good omen.

I don’t know what these guys are—I want to say guinea hen but who knows—but I think they are plumply, gorgeously hilarious.

There are a lot of peacocks over there this year and these grownup birds were just sitting around like ducks, over by this big hole in the ground where I’ve seen a gigantic terrifying monitor lizard several times.

And then there were these guys…I think they’re sort of just half-grown males and not grownup lady peacocks but I’m no sure. Do female peacocks have blue necks and then just brown bodies? Do the blue feathers just spread down the males’ bodies as they get older (and when do the big crazy tail feathers grow in)? So many questions, concerning peacocks.

I ride by this sign every time I go to the gardens—and one time I did see a crocodile hauled out on the far edge of the big pond—but I don’t pay it much mind most of the time. I do wonder, sometimes, about the coexistence of a very endangered reptile with very endangered birds like the cranes, and I also sort of wonder why there’s no fence or something around the ponds, you know? What with people having picnics and little kids running around and me not being that fast of a biker. But normally I just ride by the sign and continue on with my business. It’s fine that it’s prohibido alimentar o molestar because I certainly have no intention of doing either, thanks so much, and can you believe that there have to be rules against bothering the crocodile?

So I was innocently biking around up by where the monkey cages used to be back when the Quiet Gardens were a sort of tiny, horrifying zoo in the seventies when we first moved here, and all of a sudden hey whoa what huh? there it was. Don’t fence this crocodile in. It was pretty overcast yesterday so maybe it was cold or something? I felt slightly shaky, like when I took a walk down a corridor full of alligators long ago, but I had to get a picture even if it wasn’t really doing anything, so here you go: a picture of a deadly saltwater crocodile, about half a mile from my house. This is how we do it in Florida, girl.

I have to tidy up a few loose ends this morning—put my razor and hair conditioner in my neccessaire, switch out my gray sweater for my black one, make sure all the socks are readily available. I hope I’ll have time for one quick last beach walk before I have to say goodbye to the baby kitty, to my mom, to Miami for the time being. The birds and the trees and the crocodile will stay here on the island, the way I can’t seem to.