Sponges, Palms, Cats, and Beer!

Today we had reservations for a tour of the Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, but what to do for the rest of the day? I had some things marked in the book so we made loose plans to do some exploring before heading to our tour. 


We started with a drive to Tarpon Springs, sponge capital of Florida (the US? the world?). In the late 1800s good sponging grounds were discovered and waves of Greek immigrants came to the area to harvest the sponges. In 1947, a red tide bloom wiped out a lot of sponges, and most of the fisherman switched to Gulf shrimp. Now, the downtown area is an eclectic mix of sponge and junk shops and places to eat authentic Greek food. Sponge harvesting still happens and apparently you can go out with them and watch.  


We started at Sponge-O-Rama to see the free video about sponges and visit a museum. I was hoping that the video would talk a little about the biology of sponges, but instead the video, circa 1970, focused on the history of sponges and how they were harvested. An interesting film, but it could use an update and unfortunately the museum was closed. 


We wandered around the downtown area a bit and I was hungry (no surprise), but Aaron was not. We made a quick stop into Hellas Bakery (at Aunt Barbara's suggestion) where I agonized over my pastry decisions. It all looked fabulous. I decided on a spanikopita (thinking that what I had before was probably not as good as the real thing - TRUE!) and two sweet pastries. YUM. 


We headed south towards St. Pete's to walk around some parks. Our first stop was the Palm Arboretum which was right on the water amidst many bayside parks. I figured since Florida was full of palm trees it would be interesting to see them all in one place and maybe learn the names of some of them. Nice plan... not true. The Palm Arboretum is lovely, but to me all 400+ palm trees sort of look the same (unlike deciduous trees that I am slowly learning to identify by the bark). I did pick a favorite, a palm that is basically all frond from Africa or somewhere, but I still can't tell you the native palm trees of Florida. 
 

The coolest part about about the palm arboretum was getting an up-close look at a few woodpeckers busily hunting their lunch. 

After the palms, we set off for a quick walk around Boyd Hill Nature Preserve. We only had about an hour, but we figured we walk fast and we could cover a lot of ground. The preserve includes marsh, swamps, and scrubland and is worth a longer visit on a cooler day. I had my eye out for wild gators, but didn't see any. We did see some birds and a giant gopher tortoise hightailing it across the scrubland to his burrow under a palm tree. His shell was at least the size of a hub cap.

Finally we made our way to north Tampa to the Big Cat Rescue. This place is not on the tourist radar, but we found out about it because Aaron loves the videos this group posts on YouTube. To provide enrichment so the cats do not get bored, the group provides pumpkins, christmas trees, cardboard animals, bags of cinnamon, and other random things that the cats then attack and destroy. Watch some videos they are hilarious!

We enjoyed the tour immensely and were sorry we could not take the follow-up feeding tour (where you can watch the cats destroy meat) because they had been fed early in the day with their worm medication. The tour is pretty informal with a volunteer leading you around describing the history of the establishment, telling you about the species, the individual, and their back story on how the cat was rescued. 

BigCat Rescue was started by a lady who bought a bobcat so some other man could not buy it and then kill it and taxidermy it. She then went to the farm and bought all the bobcats and other cats to save them too. She gave them away to friends and told them if they had any trouble to return them. Well apparently bobcats make great pets until they are about three and then they become fiercely territorial and are impossible to keep. Everyone returned the cats they had taken - like twenty. Oops. 

Long story short, the BigCat Rescue was established with the intent on closing down fur farms and keeping people from having these large cats as pets. What is really interesting is that if they take a cat, the make the owners turn in their exotic pet license and sign a legal agreement not to own these types of animals again. If the owner says no - then they won't take the cat. They also rescue and take in abanodend animals, or former performers, or kittens whose mom's were killed. Some, like the bobcats, they try to release into the wild, but others are permanent residents. 


The volunteers are not allowed to touch the animals at all so each enclosure has a two or more compartments to they cages can be cleaned, maintained, and food and enrichment provided. The enclosures are large, larger than a lot of zoos I have seen and fully vegetated. I did not observe many that had walking paths from bored cats like I often see in zoos. They have nearly finished building a "cat run" like the size of a football field that the cats will get to take trips to.

This tour gets you closer to mountain lions, tigers, bobcats, servals, leopards than I have ever been before. A lot of the cats were sleeping, but it was hot, so I cannot blame them. It was an awesome tour and I would go again. 

To follow up that amazing experience, we went to Cigar City Brewing, recommended by Karrie and James as some of the best beer they had ever had. The only info I could find online led us to the tasting room where I had four delicious brown ales and stouts. The best one had chicory in it, but it was seasonal, no longer available, and I cannot remember the name. Our bartender gave us directions to another branch of Cigar City that was a restaurant with food, but warned us they would have different beers on tap except for the flagship four. That seems really weird to me that they would have the same name then... if they make different beers, be different breweries! I had a beer with lemongrass in it that was heavenly called the Fountain of Youth and another that was horchata inspired. These people certainly use creative ingredients. They served the best food I have ever eaten at a brewpub. Simply fabulous stuff. A good thing a bad thing that we don't live in the area.