Sunday, July 29, 2007

Happy Birthday, O.K.!

Not everyone in the world has a swamp named after them, like O.K. Welcome to the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia and Florida, infested with orchids, alligators, and pythons:Some raw facts from various sources on-line:
*** largest swamp in North America (700 square miles = 1800 km2, Eskilstuna kommun is 1100 km2) and
preserved for the future

*** Okefenokee means "Land of the Trembling Earth" in the Choctaw Indian language


*** The last tribe to seek sanctuary in the swamp, the Seminoles, conducted raids on settlers in surrounding areas. An armed militia led by General Charles R. Floyd ended the era in 1850, by driving the Seminoles into Florida.


*** A battery is a mass of peat that is pushed to the surface of the swamp water by the buoyant force of trapped methane and carbon dioxide, by-products of underwater decomposition. Many people in the Okefenokee region call such formations "blow-ups."


***The entire swamp is covered with peat beds which overlay the sand floor. In the Okefenokee Swamp, it takes about 50 years for one inch of peat to form at the base of the swamp. Unstable peat masses will tremble, giving the Okefenokee its name "Land of the Trembling Earth."


*** All of North America's venomous snakes live in or around the Okefenokee as well as alligators, many turtle species, lizards, and tortoises.

*** Alligators: This lizard shaped reptile reaches a length of 14 feet (3.5m) and a weight of 500 pounds (230 kg). Her diet consists of nearly anything she can catch but she shows very little interest in human prey.


OK, wet, trembling, and hot and humid - O.K., when will we visit? This place sounds like something out of The Lord of the Rings, the Princess Bride and Harry Potter combined! Let's paddle in and see if we can find some wildlife!
And yes, it is O.K.'s birthday on July 30, so when I post this it is his birthday in Sweden, and soon here in the US too.

GRATTIS och HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

6 comments:

O.K. said...

"Thank you, thank you very much. Huh!"

LS said...

Har du fatt nagon tarta? (Any cake yet?)

PP said...

And greetings from me too!

Any special plans?

O.K. said...

Cake last friday and blueberry pie today. No special plans, just ordinary barking dog plaza stuff. I.e. taming the garden with the scythe, picking some chantarelles, fixing broken toys... :)

O.K. said...

"OK, wet, trembling, and hot and humid - O.K., when will we visit?"

When it freezes we can go iceskating. Dry, solid, cool and no hostile reptiles. :) Maybe not the same thing though...

LS said...

I guess you have to wait for the global cooling for that!