Homotubiens

Florida... an idyllic spring runs through thick green trees and brush that form a leafy canopy above the cool clear water... at least, it's rumoured to be clear. On Saturday, however, every last square inch was covered by a person in a bright yellow rubber ring ("tubes"). This could well have been due to the radio broadcasts in the preceding week that said "Heat wave! Temperatures due to reach 110 F. IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, SUBMERGE IN WATER!" Well, okay, I'm paraphrasing, but clearly the whole of Florida took the same message as me and headed straight for Ichetucknee Springs. People swimming, people tubing, tubes with 1 person, tubes with 5 and some tubes with no people at all. While there was a distinct lack of turtles and other wildlife, there was still plenty of biology to observe from the Homotubians themselves. Darwinism was seen in action as groups of teenagers dived head first from the overhanging trees into the water. Whether any of them lived to re-emerge is impossible to say... though there is the issue of the empty tubes. Occasional pile-ups had to be avoided as one tube would get stuck on a log causing a crunch of yellow inflatable plastic ending in a few limbs sticking out at odd angles. A photo would have been great, but it probably would have been the last my camera ever took. At the end of the run, tubes were piled onto a cart and the homotubians onto another to be wheeled back to the car park, where yours truly exposed herself to all nearby traffic in an effort to get out of her swimsuit. But really, integrated over (a shockingly short) time it was no worse than half the bikinis I saw.