Bring On The Vultures

Vero Beach, FL

No LL

The cold weather fish kill down here appears to be more massive than we imagined. Every day, the number of dead fish floating on the water, or washed up on the shore continues to increase. That makes it seem that the fish continue to die days after it warmed up. It's the same all over Florida.

Today, there appears to be one dead fish per 100 square feet of water, and the shorelines are completely covered. The smell is increasing too. In a week or so it may be really stinky.

I even read in the paper that someone found a 52 pound pacu dead in the water. The pacu is an amazonian fish, also called the vegetarian piranha. The world record pacu previously caught was 44 pounds. This one proved to be a female full of eggs. Thank goodness it's the vegetarian kind; it looks scary. Nobody knows how they got to Florida.

In Fort Pierce and in Stuart they have big colonies of turkey vultures. For some reason, we see no vultures at all here in Vero. Too bad, we could really use them now. The pelicans and small birds appear satiated. They can't eat more.