Nature in the South

by FERENC IVANICS
I know, I know, our mission is about friendship and brotherhood... about people, but we spend definitely more time with nature than with other people; so we can’t ignore it, that’s why I’m going to write about nature of Southern USA this time.

When I try to recall the dangers we faced when going on excursion in Vojvodina or in Hungary I cannot think of something nastier than ticks. Stray dogs, rabid foxes, hogs or lightnings maybe. But apart from the tick-threat the chance to meet these threats is fairly low. To use these instruments to commit a suicide would probably require years of trying it deliberately. And if you take the tick problem seriously you can always use a chemical spray to keep them—ant the diseases they spread—away. We’re used to all these threats. I can go out to the forests near Palić and sleep under the stars anytime.

Well, it’s quite different here. The most frightful is the weather: electric storms, tornadoes, hurricanes... Electric storms are the most common phenomena, we see them various times a week. We have developed quite a sense of predicting their path. And when contact is unavoidable we try to hide from them. It’s quite annoying to get soaked in minutes when a storm arrives. But what’s really scary is the amount of lightnings an electric storm produces in the southern part of the USA. It’s a risk you have to take seriously. We haven’t seen tornadoes yet, but wild, surging storm clouds, the cradle of real tornadoes. This wild and highly unpredictable weather always makes it more difficult to keep up with our road map.


Hurricane season lasts here from June to November. The highest chance to meet a hurricane is in August and September. I think most of you have heard about the hurricane Katrina and how hard it hit Mississippi and South-Louisiana. Walking along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi you see new houses everywhere. The ruins are cleared away but the foundations of the wrecked houses are still there. And nature suffered as well, not only because of the fierce winds, but the floods brought saltwater to the area and most plants are struggling to stay alive.



Robert, our host in NOLA took us on an exhausting trip in the surroundings and explained that it wasn’t the wind but the floods that took most lives in the city. We saw ruined and deserted neighborhoods, houses with X marks on them—telling details about the rescue crews’ findings. We hope not to experience anything like that on our trip.


Entering Louisiana we found ourselves in a huge swampland. One bridge follows another and it’s perfectly common to see a bridge that’s four miles long, and near New Orleans there’s a twenty-mile long bridge. Rain, humid and warm climate, and dense tropical forests provide ideal habitat for many animals. Some of them highly venomous. It’s not uncommon to see snakes run over by cars on the roadsides. Usually they are non-venomous but sometimes we see dangerous ones as well: mostly moccasin snakes, coral snakes, and rattlesnakes. Some spiders, like the brown recluse spider, have potent venom as well, they are not able to kill a man but definitely can inflict serious wounds.



So, we have to be alert, not taking our eyes off wild animals like snakes, insects and spiders. When we get home we’ll just lay down in a forest clearing and not think about fire ants and scorpions again for a while...