Fulita says goodbye to the disappearing swimming hole for a season
Annual event: the wetland dries up
photos and note by Eric Jackson
For years, dogs in the neighborhood have frolicked in the local wetland. It has been a bad year — for the people who feed these dogs, for the wetland where they have customarily played, thus for the dogs themselves. In any case, every rainy season comes to an end. Does it take a long-suffering Detroit Tigers fan to hold out hope that next season will be better?
Over the past year the wetland was degraded by the cutting of vegetation on adjacent land, the spraying of herbicides along the bank, a little boy who with his mother standing by throwing rocks at dogs coming and going for their customary afternoon swims. The hominid, canine and feline populations in the neighborhood went through some changes as these dramas were playing out.
Will the drama in the neighborhood resume when the rains do? It will be nice if only the water returns.
The outcast dog with a bit of hip dysplasia runs with a little bit of a limp, but loves her swimming exercise. Here she checks a spot that a few weeks ago was regularly underwater.
These are too far inland to be manglares, but when the swamp is wet this vegetation does provide fresh water habitat for wildlife, as the mangroves in a tidal zone do for a different mix of creatures.
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