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Point Pelee "Reptiles are a part of the old wilderness
of earth, the environment in which man got the nerves and hormones
that made him human. If we let the reptile go ... we shall no
longer be exactly human." "Bring your water bottles in and I'll fill them with ice for you," a clerk in Leamington offered. The ice turned out to be a good thing. It was September, but a summery blue sky with rows of cirrocumulus clouds helped pull us down the road to Point Pelee National Park. When we arrived, we received pleasant news. Bicycles were admitted free. "Now that's the kind of surprise I like," I said. Point Pelee National Park may be one of Canada's smallest national parks, but it hosts a whopping half a million visitors each year. The park is well known as a bird watchers' mecca (it boasts 55 types of songbirds alone). Three-hundred-seventy species, from dainty black-and-white Avocets to knobby-kneed Yellowlegs, have been identified in the area. Some aficionados report they've spotted a hundred species in a single day! Bird watchers are not the only ones to flock to the park to view its amazing variety of winged creatures. Butterfly admirers descend in droves, too. For a few days each autumn, thousands upon thousands of orange and black Monarch butterflies, travelling on their long migration to Mexico, stop and rest in a small grove of Point Pelee trees. But, that's not all. As an added bonus, my favourite reptile, the non-venomous yellow-bodied Fox snake with its sleek black isosceles triangles, lives there, too (when threatened it secretes an odorous substance that smells like a red fox). We pedalled off, keeping a watchful eye out for birds, butterflies, and slithering creatures. Tulip trees spread their flamboyant leafy branches overhead, offering a crosshatched canopy of shade as we cruised the deserted park path. The road dead-ended. We abandoned our bikes and traipsed three kilometres along a boardwalk to the very tip of a 20-foot wide dagger-shaped spit of sand and gravel - Canada's most southerly point of mainland. (Canada's southernmost chunk of land, Middle Island in Lake Erie, still lay 14 kilometres away.) Standing at 42 degrees latitude, I exulted "We made it!" I picked up a stone and chucked it as far as I could into the waves of Lake Erie. "I wonder what Sarnia Bob would say now?" "This is truly amazing!" Sharon said. "Can you believe we're in Canada and we're standing at the same latitude as northern California? Why, we're farther south than Barcelona and Rome!" "Unbelievable," I agreed, warily watching the Great Lake splashing on three sides of us. "Feels a little eerie to me." |
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