Through Our Eyes

Heather Henson, daughter of the creator of the highly popular Muppets, the late Jim Henson, is bringing their show-stopping performances to the upcoming “Ding” Darling Days held October 14-20 at the “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel.

 Heather is inviting people to “come and share space with us, the same way we share our environment with the animals living around us”. Their Endangered Species & Wildlife Parade will feature the Florida panther, whooping crane, and manatees.

 It is Heather’s mission to bring her parade toFlorida’s parks, refuges, and wildlife conservation areas because of her committed interest in wetlands and whooping crane migrations and protection. “We do it because we love educating and love people seeing the puppets”, said IBEX Puppetry company manager, Frank Ramirez.

 Eye Help Animals is helping to save the Florida Panther and the Manatee.

You just can’t make this stuff up! On Sept.9, 2012 an endangered loris was found in a man’s pants at an international airport! According to MyFox.8 and an article written by Ryan Sullivan entitled “Endangered Primate Found in Man’s Pants at the New Delhi Airport”, a loris was captured by airport security guards while conducting a routine pat search.

OC- Natalie Kelley

I recently read an article in “Weird Science” by Brandon Keim- The Hidden Power of Whale Poop. I was blown away by the statistics on the declining numbers of the whale population and how human destruction doesn’t just stop with the slaughter of the whales. Before commercial whaling, there were more than 200,000 blue whales in the world, and today we have less than 8,000. A whale’s fecal plume is liquid gold to the ocean and future generations of whales and fish, in other words, it is the ocean’s fertilizer. Because plankton thrives in fecal plume, the less poop there is, the less food they have to eat. This broken cycle of life also affects humans, fish being one of our favorite food sources. This article also contains possibly the largest captured picture of whale fecal plume ever, measuring almost the entire whale’s length!

OC- Natalie Kelley