(Miami-AP) – Some workers at the Miami Seaquarium are in trouble for allowing an employee to turn a protected leatherback sea turtle into stew. The turtle had died from injuries suffered in a collision with a boat. Seaquarium officials say letters were put in the files of a veterinarian and a supervisor for allowing a worker to take some of the turtle meat home to make stew. The employee brought some of the dish to the Seaquarium and shared it with co-workers.
Wildlife officials say no charges were filed because the Seaquarium’s permit to handle endangered species doesn’t say how it should dispose of dead animals. But a Seaquarium official says consuming the bodies of dead animals is against park policy. One animal rights activist suggested changing the park’s name to the Miami Seaquarium and Barbecue.
Someone better check the exhibit tanks. I went a couple of years ago and there used to be this very large lobster…
(Don’t laugh about the state snack. IIRC, “Myakka fine sand” is our official state soil.)
It’d be just like the Iron Chef show, but grimmer and more extreme. It would take place in some shadowy underground location in South East Asia and the special ingredient would be some super-exotic endangered animal that died of
accidental or natural causes, like…
Snow Leopard killed by a branch falling on his head
A White Rhino who had an aneurysm trying to mate with Range Rover
Bald Eagle ala power line
The hand of a last weeks losing chef
The guest judges/diners could all be nefarious, sinister characters like Asama Bin Laudin, Charles Manson or John Wayne Gayce. To add to the tension one randomly
chosen appetizer will be doped with blowfish poison.
State Bird: Mockingbird [sub](proposed in 1930’s, but never ratified)[/sub]
State Animal: Florida Panther [sub](like the mockingbird is NOT an animal?!? WTF?)[/sub]
State Freshwater Fish: Florida Largemouth Bass
State Saltwater Fish: Atlantic Sailfish
State Marine Mammal: West Indian Manatee
State Saltwater Mammal: Bottlenosed Dolphin [sub](except that manatees DO live in fresh, salt and brackish water)[/sub]
TWO State Gems: Moonstone and Agatized Coral
State Soil: Myakka Fine Sand
Gues what’s missing? No Official State Reptile!
But what do you expect from a place where the state song is/was “Old Folks at Home” - not sure if that’s gotten changed recently.
Oh, and the “State Day” is April 2 - no idea why the Legislature chose that day, since Florida was admitted to the union on March 3, 1845.
I can see the new state motto:
“Florida - We Save Rare Species, and Send Them Back Medium Well.”
“Leatherback Turtle - The Other ‘Other White Meat’.”
I hereby nominate the Florida attorney general as the official State Reptile.
I lived in Florida for 15 years until I escaped at the age of 19, and I can tell you unequivocally that the State Bird is actually the mosquito. (And the state animal should be the cockroach.)
If my experience with eating turtle is any indication, those folks paid for it the next day. Granted I didn’t eat Leatherback, at least I don’t think it was Leatherback…