Wednesday, September 06, 2006
My Personal (Would-Be) Stingray Encounter
How dangerous are stingrays? Well, as someone noted at BLTB, Steve Irwin is only the third person known to have been killed by one.
But I could easily have had my own stingray encounter as an adolescent. When I was in middle school, one thing we got to do every year was spend a week at the Environmental Studies Center. I think this is unique to Florida, and maybe even to our county. We would go to the center (each school sent kids during a different week) and learn about how the local ecosystem worked. There were a few days where we would actually take a field trip to the Indian River lagoon (to any former teachers reading this: see, I still remember that the "Indian River" is actually a lagoon, and not a river!) with seine nets and try to catch some of organisms we had studied.
There are two things I still remember about those trips:
1) We never caught anything, and
2) They always drilled into us that when wading in the lagoon, we were supposed to drag our feet to avoid being stung by stingrays.
So if stingrays are normally that dangerous, would schools really take sixth- and seventh-graders into an area where they are known to live?
One other thing: Three recorded deaths from stingrays. Ever. I'll bet more people are killed by dogs other than pit bulls in any given year.
But I could easily have had my own stingray encounter as an adolescent. When I was in middle school, one thing we got to do every year was spend a week at the Environmental Studies Center. I think this is unique to Florida, and maybe even to our county. We would go to the center (each school sent kids during a different week) and learn about how the local ecosystem worked. There were a few days where we would actually take a field trip to the Indian River lagoon (to any former teachers reading this: see, I still remember that the "Indian River" is actually a lagoon, and not a river!) with seine nets and try to catch some of organisms we had studied.
There are two things I still remember about those trips:
1) We never caught anything, and
2) They always drilled into us that when wading in the lagoon, we were supposed to drag our feet to avoid being stung by stingrays.
So if stingrays are normally that dangerous, would schools really take sixth- and seventh-graders into an area where they are known to live?
One other thing: Three recorded deaths from stingrays. Ever. I'll bet more people are killed by dogs other than pit bulls in any given year.
