Pat Bean's blog

An anhinga trying to swallow a fish too large for its throat. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather accepting things that can not be.” — Author unknown

I’m not a quitter. That’s mostly a good thing. But sometimes you have to admit you can’t reach the top of a mountain, fix a bad marriage or write a perfect piece of prose. So you come back down the mountain before you die; you move on with your life while you still have a bit of sanity left; and you send your imperfect article off to a publisher and begin a new piece of writing.

I watched an anhinga, while hiking the Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park with my granddaughter, Keri, that might have taken this advice to heart. When we came upon the bird it was perched on a limb above a shallow pool of water trying to swallow a fish too large for its thin neck. We stood there and watched it for a full 30 minutes as it attempted this task.

Several times the fish fell back into the water. The anhinga would dive after it, spear it with beak, come back up to its perch and once again maneuver the fish head down into the opening of its throat. When Keri and I finally gave up watching and moved on, the anhinga was still at what just might have been one of those impossible tasks.

A cormorant and turtles keep watch beside the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades. Photo by Pat Bean

There’s much to see along this popular trail that winds for nearly a mile through a sawgrass marsh full of wildlife. From the trail’s elevated boardwalk, one can almost reach out and touch cormorants, great blue herons, turtles and even alligators that call the area home.

The anhingas, which give the trail its name, are particularly populous. It is sometimes called the snake bird because its low profile in water often leaves only its long-necked head visible.