Sanibel Journal

November 22, 2014 – One day last week, we decided to walk to the beach, starting from the site of our planned home on Cooley Hammock at the west end of Sanibel.  We walked directly from the house pad (fill dirt has been spread out on the cleared part of the site) through the jungle to the southwesternmost corner of the 3.6 acres, exiting the brush at the bike path.  We walked northwesterly up the bike path for a mere three minutes, then crossed Sanibel-Captiva Road.  We were already at the beach.  A three minute walk isn’t bad; all we need to do is create the path in Cooley Hammock from the house site to that corner of the property. We walked down the beach (southeasterly) past just two houses, one of which is huge and named “Mandalay,” and then we were on a pristine beach that has no houses; instead, a bayou and acres of mangroves separate the beach from the homes on San-Cap road.  When we’d been walking for about ten minutes on the beach, we were at the ent...

November 14, 2014 -- My friend Sharon recently wrote a post on Facebook about the lizard who lives in her condo.  Judging from the photo she posted, I’d say her lizard is a “house gecko,” a non-native species that originates in Southeast Asia, or it might be a Mediterranean gecko, also a non-native.  She calls him “Squiggles.” Similarly, we have a couple of native lizards called anoles living on our screened porch.  The reason that Floridians like us permit little lizards to live in our space is that they eat bugs.  Sharon’s Squiggles is eating no-see-ums (sand fleas) and little spiders.  Our screen-roaming anoles eat no-see-ums as they try to squeeze through the “no-see-um screen.” Sharon asked her friends if she should put out a little bowl of water for Squiggles.  The answer is definitely “yes”; the little guy will dry out and die if he can’t get any water in the condo.  Our anoles are able to leave the porch via a space under the screen door, ...

November 12, 2014 --   Five years ago, I was asked to return to a position on the board of directors for the Committee of the Islands (COTI), a non-partisan political committee on Sanibel Island.   Then I was asked to be the president of that organization – a job I held for four years, meeting my term limits.   I’m now in the middle of one last, post-presidential, year on that board. One of the first things I did when I began my time as president was to review the history of the group, doing much research in the archival files at the Sanibel Library.  I wrote an article about the history of COTI, and later I adapted the article for the “history” page of the COTI web site at http://www.coti.org/history.cfm .  Go ahead and read that page if you’re interested in Sanibel.  I’m proud of this organization’s roots in the founding of the City of Sanibel – an act of defiance to protect the fragile barrier island from over-development.  This history ha...