Something to Cheer About

Hello, hungry people.

I’m delighted to share three things that have lifted me up lately.

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Thing #1

Down here in Florida we call it “Running the Publix Gauntlet.”

Meaning, you can’t go to the grocery store on the weekend without passing kids who set up by the doors and ask you to shell over a few bucks for Girl Scout cookies or sports teams or whatever else they’ve got going on.

I’m a sucker for all of them.

Most recently, it was these three young ladies, members of a junior cheerleading team raising money for summer camp.

I tossed $5 in their plastic bucket. And one of them asked: “Sir, would you like a cheer?”

Well, of course I’d like a cheer. Who wouldn’t?

So they gave me a rousing round of “Let’s go, Jaguars!”

When they were done, I told them: “But I’m a Dolphins fan. I want my money back.”

They got all big-eyed and, the one in the middle, I thought she was gonna cry.

“Just kidding,” I said.

Still, they didn’t find anything funny about it.

“We can change it to Dolphins for another five dollars,” said the one on the right.

“Nice try,” I said.

But that girl has a future.

Thing #2

That bird you’re looking at is a limpkin, spotted feeding on Lake Virginia, just a couple of blocks from where I live.

It’s the first limpkin I’ve seen around here in I can’t remember when.

They’re also known as the “crying bird” because their call will definitely get your attention. It sounds like someone hurting bad. So startling is the cry of the limpkin that when the Tarzan movies were filmed in Florida back in the 1930s and 40s, they recorded limpkins to make it sound like an African jungle.

Limpkins aren’t often found much north of Florida. They used to be common here and fed almost exclusively on our native apple snails.

But you know how that story goes. Development has eaten up our wetlands. Apple snails began to disappear. And so did limpkins. At one point, there were thought to be fewer than three or four thousand of them left in the state.

This is one of those bad news/good news scenarios.

In recent years, apple snails from South America, discarded by tropical fish collectors and the aquarium trade, have established themselves in Florida’s waters and crowded out what few native snails are left.

As for the limpkins? They love snacking on what is officially considered a pest. They’re still on Florida’s imperiled species list, but they now have an all-you-can-eat buffet. And thanks to those invasive snails, limpkins have made a big comeback.

Now, if we can only get them to develop a taste for love bugs.

Thing #3

So what you see here is just what it looks like: A guy walking down the street and reading a book.

But when was the last time you saw anyone walking down the street reading anything other than a phone?

For the record, the book was “A Tale for the Time Being,” by the American author Ruth Ozeki. According to the blurbs it’s a “metafictional novel narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl living in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese American writer living on an island off the coast of British who finds the diary of the young woman washed ashore some time after the 2011 tusnami that devastated Japan.”

So there you have it. Not exactly light reading.

But here’s hoping that, like the limpkin, reading while walking makes a comeback.

And give that guy a cheer!

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Thanks for dropping by. And, just like those young cheerleaders outside of Publix, I’d like you to consider dropping money in my bucket. Meaning, punch this button.

Or, at the very least, please spread Bob’s Diner around.

Or, as always, say what you’ve got to say.