Welcome to my blog. Karen Dove Barr is my special guest today. Karen and I share a vision of a world where humans and animals can co-exist in harmony. Readers, Karen is giving away
a $25 Walmart gift card to FOUR (4) randomly drawn commenters during the tour, and a Grand Prize of an Apple iPad to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour, so follow her tour and comment often. You can find her schedule at
Karen, welcome to the blog.
1.How did you find Skidaway Island?
As a resident of Savannah I knew
Skidaway Island was a tropical paradise separated from Savannah by miles of
marshland and two rivers, one river being part of the Intracoastal
Waterway. The Savannah Morning News announced
the State of Georgia agreed to build a causeway and bridge to the island after
Robert C. Roebling, whose grandfather built the Brooklyn Bridge, donated the
land he owned in the northwest quadrant of Skidaway Island to the State of
Georgia for a marine science center and Branigar Corporation donated a piece of
the land it owned on the western side to the State of Georgia for a state park.
The announcement created a great
buzz in Savannah, especially after Branigar Corporation announced it planned to
build a luxury retirement development on some of its remaining Skidaway land. I went to check out the planned home space
and was greeted at the gate by a beautiful herd of deer. The deer deserve a cut of the realtor’s
commission because they sold me on moving to the island.
2.What's your favorite
animal on the island?
I love all the animals on the island
but the masked bandit, against my wishes, holds a special place in my
heart. Raccoons are related to
bears. They are extraordinarily
intelligent. I put out cat food for
feral kitties, but the raccoons get more than their share of it. When I shoo them away, the cats run from me,
but raccoons put on their “cute” face and beg to stay. Raccoons have worked out that if they let the
cats have the first bites I will go back in the house and they can then steal
the rest. They sometimes cooperate with
cats, even sharing a food bowl under a cat trap I used to have the feral cats
neutered and vaccinated.
Maybe the raccoons knew they would
be freed instead of making the trip to the vet.
The raccoon on the cover of Wild Times on Skidaway Island , had a
guilty expression on his face when I caught him eating out of the bird feeder.
3. How did the island come to be
an Audubon-designated, ecologically friendly refuge?
To become an Audubon-designated
Important Bird Area, a community must apply and meet specific criteria. Actually the six golf courses on Skidaway
Island are the areas that attained Audubon Important Bird Area designation. To qualify the site must support:
- Species
of conservation concern
- Restricted-range
species
- Species
that are vulnerable because their populations are concentrated in one
general habitant type or biome
- Species,
or groups of similar species (such as waterfowl or shorebirds), that are vulnerable
because they occur at high densities due to their congregatory behavior.
4. What is the most important thing you'd like
the public to learn from your book?
I’d like the public to learn that
there are unexplored consequences to protection of endangered species and that
it takes more than increasing animal populations to successfully create a
climate where animals and people coexist and thrive together.
I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that it sounds like you live in a wonderful place. Readers, let's take a look at an excerpt from Wild Times on Skidaway Island.
Wild Times on Skidaway Island
by Karen
Dove Barr
EXCERPT
But nothing in Walt’s Princeton-educated background prepared
him for dryocopus pileatus, the pilated woodpecker.
Male pilated woodpeckers are fixated on the notion that
female woodpeckers are attracted to the stud with the noisiest pecker. Usually
the woodpecker has to be content with drumming on a hollow tree to resonate his
sound. Walt and Carol’s metal roof, however, raised the bar for the local
woodpecker population. Walt and Carol
were regularly awakened by mate-seeking woodpeckers as soon as they moved into
the house.
Walt ended up having to make a run to Toys ’R Us for rubber
snakes. Glued to the chimney alongside a big fake owl, the snakes allowed Walt
and Carol to catch some winks in the early morning during woodpecker mating
season.
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