Cypress Wetlands photo by Luke Frazier
A recent visit to the Port Royal Cypress Wetlands and Rookery felt different than usual. Most of the dozen times I’ve been there in the past year have been the same: stroll the boardwalk, listen to visitors say “wow,” admire all the birds, take a few pics, try and spot gators and turtles.
Cypress Wetlands encompasses five wetland areas, and during the spring and summer it’s a breeding ground for all kinds of birds, including the white ibis, black-crowned night-heron, snowy egret, great egret, yellow-crowned night-heron, and green heron.
Originally billed as a stormwater solution and attracting funding in 1999 on that basis and as a natural enhancement, it now enjoys wide popularity and renown. There are plenty of long camera lenses and knowing looks among the many visitors.
This last visit, though, was rawer and more urgent. There must be more than a thousand birds in various states of residence currently there, and the heightened noise, smell, and activity borders on overwhelming. There were all kinds of fussing, squawking, chasing, and fighting going on in and among the trees and branches, but it was one battle in particular that caught our attention.
In the highest branches of a tree in the biggest nesting area, about halfway down the boardwalk over the water, there were two Great Egrets just wailing on a third one as it cowered in its nest. I mean pecking and jabbing like Ali in his prime. A fourth Egret stood by, not participating but not really defending the attacked one either. My sister in law was concerned and a guy who seemed confident in his opinion kind of shrugged and confirmed that yes, the birds meant harm and were probably after the nest and its eggs. It reminded me of one of the nature shows on television, like the old program Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. It’s all fun and games until violent instincts take over. Chaos ruled amidst the beauty on this hot and muggy night, and the nature of memory provided a trail back to childhood, in front of the console TV, watching that Sunday night program.
Growing up as the youngest of nine kids meant household chaos, in both the best and worst of ways. A profusion of love and spiritedness, a mother who lived creatively as an actress and burst out in song at any time for any reason. A father who plunked out tin pan alley tunes on the upright at house parties filled with playhouse friends, fueled by scotch and an undying enthusiasm for togetherness, having been an only child himself. Only later, after sibling deaths, drug and booze abuse, and detours into mental illness did the chaos display a dark edge, requiring a circling of the emotional wagons, a retreat from the expansive affirmation of a socially boisterous Irish-Catholic family to a huddle of hesitation: just us.
Many of those just us moments took place around the television screen, as we gathered in a ritual that seemed part escape, part embrace: we could enjoy each other’s company without dealing with the herd of elephants in the room. Sometimes it was elephants on the screen instead, as when we watched the aforementioned Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom in the late 60’s and early 70’s. How we loved the droll zookeeper Marlon Perkins, a dashing figure enjoying wildlife around the globe. And his sidekick Jim, always game to be the one to leave the safety of the jeep.
Death was dealt with directly in many of those episodes, at least as I remember it: the lion
Cypress Wetlands photo by Luke Frazier
chasing down the gazelle and the resulting blood on the savannah; the eagle swooping, plucking, then devouring the rodent. I recently went back and watched the very first episode of the show and was hit with a somber pre-title voiceover of these words while a Giant Anteater ran across a field: “In the wild kingdom, where death is swift, life depends on a design for survival.”
The episode was called “Designs for Survival” and featured a box turtle getting hassled by a lion cub on a table in the studio as Marlon explained how its armor offered protection. Later, we saw suit & tied Marlon swatting an African Porcupine with a broom and analyzing the extracted quills as another form of armor with Jim, alerting us to their “microscopic barbs” that stick painfully in predators. Nothing was said about the pain from getting hit with a broom.
After examples of evasive survival, the episode concluded with a purposefully provoked python spitting poisonous venom on Marlon’s plastic face mask before both he and Jim bottle-fed baby lions. Marlon delivered a conservation message centered on preserving natural habitats, including his wistful take on loss, “…every day we must travel a little bit farther to find the wild kingdom.”
I’ve traveled mighty far from that wild kingdom of childhood, where survival instincts took on their own self-defeating designs. I’ve followed many a boardwalk trail over dangerous waters and seen violence up close. I wore armor of denial, evaded detection from self, spit in the face of opportunity and deceived with the best (worst) of them. Now I’m plopped into the middle of an area that has a lush wetlands right off the main drag, with its own amphitheater right across from a Parker’s gas station. It all comes together in the notion of living through persistence and discovery, finally winning through surrender.
On the hazy night when Great Egrets unleashed their wrath because it was in their nature, I could almost see my mom singing up a storm to the alligators just over the rail. My dad toasts with scotch on the rocks, my long-gone siblings joining in the chorus. The song itself suggests a kind of mournful but fiercely beautiful lament, repeating something about the quality of wild kingdoms.
