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Columnist muses let there be rain

3 min read

Let there be rain, everyone in Sanibel is praying. We just can’t go on this way worrying about our darling flowers and if they’re being sufficiently nurtured and cared for.

Our sprinkler systems are now on a quota system and armed and angry Water Association security guards are authorized to handcuff and haul away any homeowner daring enough to defy the quotas.

Some homeowners are spending weekends in specially created water abuser cells at the Water Association facilities and are forced to sit through films depicting arid deserts.

Instances have been reported of homeowners watering their lawns, plants and flowers in the dead of night. But to no avail. The Water Association is making use of new technology that consists of German Shepherds that have been trained to sniff water from hoses and sprinklers. There’s nothing more terrifying than having these highly trained dogs nip at your hoses in the middle of the night.

The heart of the problem is simply this: just as we have become dependent on oil for energy we have also become too dependent on water for survival.

We need alternatives. We drink water, bathe and swim in it and cultivate our yards and gardens with it. Without abundant water our forests burn, our flowers shrivel, our grass turns brown and we can literally die of thirst. Our bodies are made up of some 90 percent of water. Talk about dependence.

Rather than pray and wait for rain we need to figure out what else can substitute for water. It might just be a laboratory invented liquid of some sort that doesn’t include water. It could look like water, taste like water, splash on like water but isn’t water. Is this too much to ask for from scientists who gave us Viagra and Gatorade?

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink”. This famous line from a classic poem is becoming the theme of Sanibel life. Don’t we have enough to worry about with alligators, lizards, hurricanes and blackened food lurking in the background? Now we have to conserve the little bit of water that we have and pray for the skies to open up?

Have you seen your water bills lately? And you thought that gas at the pump is expensive? With shortage come high prices. Is it possible to hoard gallons of milk and use that in our gardens? Just a thought.

It seems that we go through this exercise every winter, spring and summer. We never have enough rain and then POW tropical weather takes over by the summer and we’re inundated with rain. In fact, we get too much of it. Someone ought to talk to Mother Nature and ask her to spread things around a bit more evenly. Why is she so angry with us sometimes? What have we in Sanibel done to deserve drought conditions and then floods as a result of hurricanes?

I know what the reason is. It all started when the Sanibel causeway toll went from three bucks to six. So we can blame Lee County for the problem.

Somehow they rubbed Mother Nature the wrong way and she decided that the extra three bucks was a slap in her face. And now we don’t have enough rain. Serves us right for not seceding from Lee County when we had the chance.