Email ElizabethThe Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary at Naples, Florida
Blair Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary
What I really like about this time of year is while I am wandering off to look for Wood Storks at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, buyer’s agents in Sacramento are hard at work showing my listings. I’ve already slipped one transaction into escrow and have received 2 offers on another — I’m kissing my cellphone right now and leaving little smudgy lip marks.
White Ibis Eating a Swamp Bug
People ask me why I like to focus on sellers, and this is why. If I do my job correctly, and I do, it comes back ten-fold. Instead of fumbling with lockboxes and doors that stick, I am flipping the auto switch on my Nikon to manual and adjusting the focus on that White Ibis, also known as the Chokoloskee Chicken. Their long bills allow them to dig into the mucky floor of the swamp to find bugs. In fact, this White Ibis is enjoying a tasty snack in the photo to the right. Yum. Swamp bugs. Have you had breakfast yet?
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Many other types of wildlife live in the Corkscrew Swamp — which is actually named after a river because of the way the river winds and is today called by another name. Some of the bald cypress trees are more than 500 years old. Plus, there are wild orchids. The famous ghost orchid lives in this swamp, about 60 feet up in trees; although they are not blooming this time of year. How do you like my Red-Bellied Woodpecker, though? Well, he’s not actually mine, or he would have a name. I would call him Henry.
Now, you may think that you will never flock to birds and become a birder when you grow older, and I have news for you. This doesn’t happen to a person when she gets old, necessarily, because my husband’s and my love for birding happened a long time ago, once we realized that all of those birds flying through our backyard when we lived in Minneapolis were not brown but instead were all kinds of different colors because, guess what, they were different birds!
Florida Soft Shell Turtle
I also happened upon a turtle in the swamp. Usually, when you approach a turtle, they quickly vanish into the water. If they are sleeping on a log, like a group of turtles we tried to photograph once in Ecuador, they splash into the water by falling over backwards or any which way just to disappear. This turtle has a nose like a pig. Its name is the Florida Soft Shell Turtle. But you know me, I would call her Sharon.
Not that I know any Sharons, mind you.
How to Kill an Alligator in Everglades City
Mangrove Tunnel in Everglades National Park
It is now possible for me to feel confident about the fact that I can actually be a useful companion if you and I were stranded in the middle of the Everglades with one bullet left in our rifle and suddenly attacked by an alligator. OK, not that I could accurately aim the rifle and fire it without knocking myself backwards into the water, thereby rendering my helpless body a tasty lunch for the alligator, but I could tell you where to aim.
Royal Tern in Everglades National Park
Ah, but you might think, ho, ho, ho, you do not need to know where to hit the alligator because any place along the back would suffice, but that is not enough to kill an alligator; it’s just enough to piss him off. I call the creature a male instead of a female because the female has the good sense to be elsewhere when all of this attacking of humans is going on. Although, you would probably not be attacked if you were standing up, minding your own business and not messing with the alligator’s tail or otherwise infuriating the guy.
Osprey in Everglades National Park
I realize that you might think it’s OK to slice its belly or repeatedly stab the alligator in the belly with your belt buckle but you are missing one crucial element. You would need to get the alligator on its back for that to happen, and good luck doing that. Just for coming up with that idea, I am not going to spoil the story by telling precisely where to kill the alligator. I want to ensure that if we are ever stranded in the Everglades together, that I will not be abandoned. I have my worth in the Everglades now. I will protect that worth. It’s got a tangible value.
We toured more of Everglades National Park on Sunday in Everglades City, and we mostly putted around in a 6-passenger boat in the Mangroves. This visitor center is part of the Ten Thousand Islands, of which Marco Island is the largest. Our tour guide sounded just like the guy who stars in The Bridge and plays the former husband of Courteney Cox on Cougar Town. If I didn’t look at him, and I wasn’t because I was so busy shooting photos of birds, I could swear it was that guy, Brian Van Holt.
It’s the Florida accent.
Great Egret in Everglades National Park
The Brazilian Peppers are not native to the Everglades and have encroached. They are squeezing out the Mangroves, which need sunlight to grow tall and time to build a strong root system. If the Mangroves are crowded, they will fall over into the water and die. You will see a lot of dead Mangroves, which is very sad. The photo above is of the Mangrove tunnel. We saw red, black and white Mangroves. The white trees are brown.
Inside the Mangrove tunnel we spotted alligators, great egrets, snowy egrets and blue herons. Those manatee are hard to spot because their noses pop up out of the water like a floating coconut and when they disappear beneath the surface, those relatives of the elephants can hold their breath for 20 minutes.
Bank of America and HAFA Short Sale Credit Report
Stepping foot on a public beach with seagulls for the very first time is daunting if all you worry about is whether a bird will poop on your head, but that’s the very thought that ran through my mind when I first walked along the ocean in California. Same thing at our resort on the Florida Gulf at Marco Island — although there are a lot more birds and fewer people. Fewer people in a resort around Christmas time means we are not forced to make a reservation for dinner, which was a huge drawback at Four Seasons and the Fairmont in Hawaii.
When a person is on vacation, a person wants to relax and not be subject to stupid rules and regulations with unnecessary restraints on time. A person expects the resort to anticipate her every desire, like this Sacramento short sale agent tries to do for her own clients. A person wants the leisure to make decisions if and when decisions are necessary. Clocks? Who needs clocks? Cellphones? OK, I do carry my cell. My house sitters could call with an emergency and one of our cats could be choking. Or I might need to identify a bird we just spotted using my handy dandy Audubon bird app. Or I might need to know if there is a Pinata party planned for tonight on Plants vs. Zombies. Important details.
I called a client on our first night at Marco Island to let her know that her short sale in Roseville had closed. She is fighting with Bank of America because the negotiators at the bank don’t seem to realize that the guidelines for HAFA short sale credit reporting have changed. My seller is so polite and nice. When the negotiator told her she needed to put her on hold while she discussed the situation with her supervisor, my client acquiesced. See, I suspect the negotiator used this time to go down the hall and buy a Diet Coke.
I would have demanded to speak with the supervisor myself. Tell ya what, I would have snarled, I’ll hold and you go get the supervisor. We sent a copy of the guidelines to the negotiator. We copied the guideline verbiage and cited section number. We sent the C.A.R. memo about credit reporting for a HAFA short sale.
Because I am not a lawyer, I can’t really fight with the bank at this point. This is a fight my client will need to undertake herself to make sure the reporting is done correctly. In a HAFA short sale for which there was no foreclosure proceeding started, the guidelines say the short sale must be reported to the credit bureau as Paid in Full. Not paid in full for less than agreed. Other Bank of America borrowers have had to fight this fight after closing, but they have won, and I have full confidence that my former seller will win as well.
Photo: Marco Island, Florida, by Elizabeth Weintraub
How Badly Do You Want to See Everglades National Park?
“How badly do you want to see the Everglades?” the guard asked as my husband and I pulled into Everglades National Park at Shark Valley, Florida. In his hand, the guard stared at my Sapphire Preferred VISA. His eyes traveled to my driver’s license and back to mine. He asked again, batting those baby browns at me: “How badly do you want to see the Everglades?” My immediate thought was: Hey, my husband is sitting RIGHT IN FRONT of you. Right here. I was speechless. What kind of question was that? Who do you think is driving this Mustang? Look! I have a wedding ring on my finger.
I pulled my mind from the gutter.
When the National Park gate guard asked us a third time, I knew his question wasn’t directly specifically at me, even though it was. You look too young, says he. That’s because, as he readily pointed out, if we waited another year, we could get a lifetime pass for the $80 I had offered to spend for a one year National Park Pass. Turning 62 has its privileges, which I will sooner discover next summer. Not now.
The best way to see Everglades National Park is by tram. That way you can stop to see the wildlife without all the critters screaming for cover and hiding. Those airboats at tourist Everglade spots look inviting and are fun to ride, but they make so much noise that they pretty much scare away any kind of critter for miles around.
We shot photos of many alligators, tons of alligators, white ibis, anhinga, blue heron and even a praying mantis. I discovered the Everglades is not a swamp. It is a river. The Everglades is not a river of grass; it is a river of sedges. It moves 1/4 of a mile per day. It is a river 40 to 60 miles wide and more than 125 miles long. We also learned that the fastest an alligator can run is between 11 and 14 MPH, so when people tell you an alligator can run as fast as a racehorse, that’s laughable. But it doesn’t mean an alligator won’t attack if you put yourself in the position to be chomped.
They are also not green. If you spot a green alligator, it’s because the alligator has given up and is rotting. It is letting algae cover its body. Alligators look a lot like a piece of tire rubber that flew off a 16-wheeler semi and landed by the side of the road. Black. Or even gray. But not green. In fact, it’s very difficult to tell the difference between a piece of tire and an alligator when you’re speeding along the highway. Just trust me on this one.
Does Work Make You Sick?
Knock on wood, I asked my husband yesterday if he can remember the last time this real estate agent was sick. I mean really sick. In bed sick, moaning and groaning, unable or unwilling to get up. It seems that when I was the communications director for a Minnesota nonprofit, I managed to use up almost every sick day I had per year. Yet, now that I live in Sacramento selling real estate, I cannot recall the last time I didn’t feel well.
Oh, wait, perhaps it was after our Galapagos trip in 2005. We thought it would be fun to end the vacation with a trip to the jungle in the middle of Ecuador. Yeah, sticky, hot and buggy, with giant croaking frogs, screaming monkeys and pouring rain at 3 AM — kinda like Sacramento short sales, now that I pause to reflect. The water wasn’t as safe to drink as we were led to believe. I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say that giardiasis is very unpleasant.
But since I’ve been a Sacramento real estate agent, I haven’t been sick one single day. Have not spent one day for the past 11 years under-the-weather, so to speak. On the surface, you could probably conclude that’s because Sacramento real estate is so all-fired consuming that I don’t have time to be sick. People who hate their jobs are often ill. I love my job. So, that, and I suspect even more important is that I spend most of my productive work time in front of my computer and not in the company of little kids.
It’s the kids that get you sick. They are walking little germ-carrying time bombs. And they make everybody else around them sick as well. When I hear a client sniffle over the phone, I ask: Do you have kids? Yup, well, there ya go. The two ingredients for a healthful life: no kids and self employment.
We are in south Florida on vacation, and there are kids everywhere. It’s hard to get away from them. We are heading off to tour the Everglades today, so don’t be surprised if an alligator or two pops up in my blog along the way.
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