Swamp Bones

March. Barely spring, yet the unseasonable Florida humidity made me feel like I’d disembarked from my flight into a Rottweiler’s mouth. For the hundredth time since arriving, I berated myself for choosing the Everglades as a vacation destination. My hair was giving me a big thumbs-down.

I had no way of knowing at that point that lank locks would turn out to be the least of my worries. That my vacation would quickly descend to a dark and grisly place. But not yet. My first hour in the glades, I was just hot and bothered.

The Daniel Beard Research Center had been a missile site during the cold war and looked like it, despite now being painted a garish flamingo pink. The color really made the National Park Service logo pop. Pushing through the door, I applauded the overzealous air-conditioning. My sweat-slicked skin instantly goose-bumped up, but my limp ponytail was too far gone to rally.

I crossed the public area and headed toward the business side of the building. A woman behind a scarred wooden desk tracked my approach. Beige hair, beige skin, coral mouth. A stern expression said she took her gatekeeping duties seriously. Really? The South Florida Natural Resources Center needed protecting?

“Dr. Tempe Brennan.” Cheerful as I could muster. “I’m here to see Dr. Robbin.”

“I don’t have you down as a visitor.” Never breaking eye contact to consult a list.

I smiled disarmingly. The gatekeeper did not.

I kept smiling doggedly until my opposition broke and said, “Bird lady’s in Lab B.” Swiveling a clipboard to face me. “John Hancock.”

After signing, then staring into a beady camera eye that produced a visitor’s badge, I proceeded down the hall, a tiny image of my unsmiling face stuck to my breast. Wall-stenciled arrows got me to Laboratory B. Through the door’s small rectangular window, I spotted a petite brunette bent over a stainless steel gurney.

I knuckle-tapped the glass, and the woman looked up and squinted. With recognition, she lowered her mask to reveal a mile-wide grin. Glad to see me or amused at my wilted appearance? The woman beckoned with a gloved hand.

The lab smelled of chemicals and decay, a familiar blend evoking thoughts of work, not sun and sand. Fortunately, this errand wouldn’t take long—I was just stopping to pick up the keys to my hostess’s house. The latest Jodi Picoult novel waited in a beach bag in my carry-on. Goodbye winter shoes, hello flip-flops.

“Tempe!” Lisa Robbin shot forward to embrace me, a gesture that, given her size, landed her head somewhere around my midsection. I did the awkward quick-squeeze thing non-huggers do.

“Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport as promised. I know it’s a hassle to cab all the way out here. But I just received a record number of packets.” Lisa’s hand fluttered toward the examining table, which contained seven lumps resembling compressed, dehydrated roadkill.

Dr. Lisa Robbin was for the birds, not just by name but also by mannerisms and calling: she was head of the Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab, and a pioneer in forensic ornithology. She and I had met while consulting on a case in South Texas. A bus carrying an exotic bird smuggler and his booty had gone over a cliff and exploded in flames, incinerating all those on board. I’d taken the human bones. Lisa had taken the talons and beaks.

Not as bizarre as it sounds. Lisa and I both analyze the dead too compromised for normal autopsy. In her case, necropsy, since her subjects are nonhuman. We work the skeletal, mummified, decomposed, dismembered, mutilated, or, in the bus crash recovery, charred to a crisp.

As a forensic anthropologist, I am a specialist in the human skeleton. I study the bones of the visually unrecognizable and the unidentified, searching for indicators of age, sex, race, and height. I observe peculiarities and anomalies. Anything to give the remains a name and, if necessary, a manner and time of death. Frankly, I’m not sure what Lisa does with her birds.

We’d bonded over the bus crash victims, passing bone fragments back and forth, human to me, avian to her. I liked her. After I’d returned home to North Carolina, and Lisa to Washington, D.C., we’d maintained contact, “birds of a feather” in male-dominated fields.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” She tipped her head, quick and sparrowlike. “I know we’d talked about a visit but wasn’t sure you’d ever make it.”

My concept of vacation usually involves Bahamian blue water, ocean breezes, and a whole lot of sand. But Lisa’s re-invitation had hit my inbox during a perfect storm of frustrations: An argument with my department chair at UNCC. A run-in with a testy prosecutor
concerning my report on his homicide victim. Dietary issues with my cat, Birdie, that meant new carpeting in the parlor. A blown timing belt on my Mazda during rush-hour traffic.

It was that last one that did it. After two hours inhaling eau de I-77 waiting for AAA, out of boredom I hit the travel app on my iPhone. Life lesson on why you don’t impulse-plan vacations. Rage booking can lead to swamps and leeches instead of waves and beaches.

“Calgon, take me away. To a predator-infested swamp,” I half joked.

“Aw, c’mon. The Everglades rock. You’ve never seen such a gorgeous variety of native birds.”

I knew increased knowledge of Florida’s indigenous feathered friends was coming my way. Guessed life would have continued just dandy without it.

“I have all kinds of fun planned.” Lisa really did chirp. “And when I have to work, you’ve got full use of my car.”

“I thought your normal beat was up in our nation’s capital,” I said, allowing my carry-on to slip from my shoulder and drop to the floor.

She laughed. “I came to Florida to avoid the humidity in Washington, D.C.”

“Seriously?”

“No. I jumped at the chance to do something other than bird strikes.”

“There’s an avian labor issue? Crows won’t fly until they get lunch breaks during the workday?”

“Bird contact with airplanes.” Rolling her eyes at my lame attempt at humor.

“Ouch.”

“Exactly. The birds never win.”

“I thought you identified feathers in the Smithsonian’s anthropological collections.”

“Feathers on ancient masks and clothing constitute a small part of what I do. But the Feather Identification Lab has interagency agreements with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Air Force, and the Navy. Most of our work involves bird strikes.”

“They occur that frequently?” Add avian kamikazes to my growing list of travel concerns.

She nodded. “Birds put US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Even Wilbur Wright had a bird strike. Last year our team processed over forty-five hundred samples. Around eighteen a day—even more during spring and fall migration.”

“Good lord. How do you manage to keep that pace?”

She threw a look toward her “packets.” “Smaller samples. We rarely get complete bodies. Sometimes I’ll get whole feathers or some bones, but often my sample consists of nothing but a smear wiped from an aircraft exterior. What we call a snarge. With a snarge, cataloguing only takes an hour.”

Snarge. Ornithologists get all the fun words.

“We partner with a lab to analyze the DNA.”

“And the point is?”

“If we can ID the species that are the culprits, an airfield can adjust.”

“How?”

“Move a pond, stop spreading grass seed, do what it takes to make the environment less attractive to that particular species. Since most bird strikes occur on takeoff and landing, managing the airfield’s immediate area can go a long way toward reducing risk.”

“How many airports does the Everglades have?”

“None that concern me. I’m here on a different project.”

I must have looked confused.

“The birds here are victims, not perps.” Again gesturing to the remains. “The Everglades has a Burmese python problem.”

“Pythons. As in alarmingly large serpents?” I wouldn’t call it a phobia, but I’m not overly fond of snakes. Slithery moves. Cold creepy eyes. You can’t trust something that doesn’t blink. “I didn’t know pythons lived in Florida.”

“They’re recent intruders. Many escaped into the swamp in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew wiped out Homestead, the nearest town, which was once a hub for breeders and importers. That’s where my place is, by the way. Homestead’s a mostly agricultural southern suburb of Miami, stretching between Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park.”

“At least it wasn’t idiot pet owners releasing exotics into the wild.”

“There’s that, too. Morons who think constriction is cuddly and buy pythons as pets. Except when little Squeezy hits twenty feet he isn’t so lovable anymore. The disenchanted owner dumps him in the Everglades and drives away. Upgrade for the snake. Not so good for the rest of the glades population.”

My gaze roved the packets. Okay. The lumps looked a little bigger than what a jet engine
would leave behind.

Lisa kept talking.

“Since Burmese pythons are threatening to become the top predator in the Everglades, the National Park Service has asked for help in identifying at-risk birds.”

I looked at the dried masses on the table.

“You’re examining the stomach contents of a python?”

“Twelve pythons, to be exact.”

“That’s a lot of dead snake.”

“The National Park Service hunts them. They’re trying to get a handle on the problem.”

“You necropsy every snake?”

“I don’t. Dr. Aaron Lundberg does. He’s a park ranger and wildlife biologist over at NPS. As the bird expert, I just get the stomach contents, sometimes a section of intestine.”

“What’s Lundberg hoping to learn?”

“Everything. Growth, health, diet, reproductive behavior. I’m focused on preferred snack foods.” With gloved fingers, she gently pried apart one of the smaller dehydrated masses. Other than a beak, a talon, nothing solid remained, just a matting of hair and feather parts. “That used to be a wood stork.
Mycteria americana
. Stood forty-five inches tall, with a wingspan of sixty to sixty-five inches. It’s endangered.”

“Jesus.”

“Mature Burmese pythons eat maybe once a month, then hunker down to digest. Metabolism occurs quite rapidly.”

“Meaning you don’t usually get bones?”

“Not unless the snake is caught right after it has ingested. I mostly rely on feathers.”