chaotic mortal

The Brownsville Story: I - The One Who Loves Dolphins

April 16th, 2008. Published under Travel, Traveling. No Comments.

On the lower coast of Texas, where South Padre Island was, there was a dolphin watcher. Her name was Marg (not really). She loved the dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, and her husband ran a dolphin-watching business.

We went dolphin watching with her for an entire day during my Brownsville spring break vacation.

This is her story, along with mine.

———-

“This is a stingray,” she said, pointing to a strange looking thing in an aquarium.

My parents, my aunt, my cousin, and another lady and a boy who would be traveling with us were looking through her Sealife Nature Center. Marg was the captain of the ship we would be going on this afternoon, as well as the founder of the Sealife Nature Center.

“You may not touch the stingray,” she said obviously.

I smiled. I had already gone on a one-hour drive to a sandy dune area of a long park road on South Padre Island. Where the road ended was a beautiful beach.

We had a lot of fun there. There were dunes that went high up in the sky, and were extremely fun to climb. After crossing the stretch of land littered with sea stuff (shells, seaweed), I finally arrived on a long beach.

The beach wasn’t the most prettiest in the world. In fact, there were off-road vehicles like trucks driving all over the place, as if it were a road. So we went back to the sandy areas.

My feet had sank in the sand. I loved walking around, making footprints, and making my dad take pictures of them. My aunt, who was an even more blogging fanatic than I was, hunkered around and took snaps of everything.

But now we were inside her Sealife Center, a few minutes away from driving to the harbor, where we would embark on a long boat ride to look for dolphins and have some fun on the water.

Marg told us to meet her in the parking lot. She got there thirty minutes ahead of us. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I should have known. I know the side streets, so while you were stuck waiting for a big boat to pass, I took a shorter route.”

Hmm. My dad shook his head, wondering how he could have not asked.

Five minutes later, and we were at Marg’s home. She showed us a few pictures of her dolphins, grabbed her camera just in case she saw any more, and headed out.

Her boat was parked across the street, where there was a small boat dock for each family. We got on the boat. It shook as we got on.

As she revved up the engines, she began telling us stories of her and the dolphins.

- - - -

It was another day out on the ocean, thought Marg to herself. She was in the South Padre Bay in her boat.

She was out looking for dolphins today, by herself. She really wanted to grab a few great shots of those dolphins, she mused as she held her camera in her hand.

But what was ahead?

It was a mother dolphin, flailing around, as if in pain. She had something on her back.

She revved the boat towards her, carefully making sure she wasn’t going to hit her.

Finally, she arrived. She saw the mother, diving and jumping around, angry and in pain, it seemed.

It was a baby dolphin on her back. Dead.

Apparently it had been hurt and the mother was in such sadness she could not do anything.

For a very long time, she vaulted around and around her boat. She could not leave the baby.

Marg, a trained professional that loved the dolphins, attempted to communicate with the dolphins. Leave her to me, she desperately communicated.

The mother flailed around.

Leave her to me. I will take good care of her, Marg thought, hoping that the mother could leave the dead baby and continue on with her life.

The mother dropped the baby, howled one more time, and then left.

Marg scooped the baby up with a net, hoping she would be okay again.

- - - -

We soon left the big water alley that was constructed for individual house-owners to put their boats in, and we were soon in a big river-wide area that my dad said stretched along the coast from Houston to Florida.

“It’s designed to keep the boats from experiencing wake,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Marg suddenly stopped the boat, and grabbed her net. Leaning out to the side, she reached out and grabbed a purple bubble-like fish.

“This,” she said, “is a inkfish. It releases ink, much like an octopus does, when it sees predators.”

As if on cue, her hand was turning purple as liquid sloshed over it and the inkfish throbbed, letting out even more ink.

“It isn’t supposed to be here yet. It’s supposed to come in the summer, but it’s already here.” It was March.

“Global warming?” suggested someone on the boat. I shrugged. Maybe.

“Does the ink come off?” my dad asked.

“No, it’s permanent.”

Take a short break if you’d like, and then continue reading the second part of my story HERE.