Gliding Through The Okefenokee Swamp – Video
Looking for Pogo, Albert the Alligator and Swampy the Dog
If you’re looking for Pogo the Possom, the gentle hero of the late Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo, you won’t find him this morning. Possoms only come out at night in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, says our naturalist guide, who told us that her pet possom gets grumpy when she brings him out during the day. Although we will see alligators, we won’t see a personification of Albert, the loud-mawed, cigar-chomping reptile of Pogo fame either, even though we might find a few his type in the Georgia legislature. Unless you’re a dog or other small mammal, you don’t have a place in their food chain. Alligators, like Garbo, prefer to be left alone.
Swampy the Dog is dead. More later.
This morning we are taking a boat ride through the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge near Folkston, Georgia, 630 square miles of cypress, blackgum, and pines, with lacy fingers of moss drooping from above, punctuating a black water swamp of grasses, aquatic plants and floating peat beds inhabited by gators, turtles, raccoons, black bears, deer, owls, ibis, herons, wood storks woodpeckers that hammer away as we boat by (I’m out of breath): more than 620 species of plants along with 39 breeds of fish, 37 amphibians, 64 reptiles, 234 birds, and 50 mammals.
It is a magical place.
In the late 19th century Captain Harry Jackson had a scheme to drain the swamp to build farms and homesteads. Thankfully he ran out of money. But then loggers attacked, chopping down virgin forests. Since then the Okefenokee has been recovering. In 1937, it became a National Wildlife Refuge.
So, let’s hop on a boat and take a ride
About Swampy the Dog
Dick Flood is a singer-songwriter who sang in the Grand Ole Opry and wrote songs that were recorded by artists including Roy Orbison and Anita Bryant. He moved to Okefenokee, changed his name to Okefenokee Joe, became an environmentalist and, for a time, the park’s animal curator.
He is quite the storyteller. Here he spins a yarn and sings a song about his beloved Swampy the Dog.
Okefenokee Park and Adventures offers boat rides, guided interpretive tours, train tours and multi-day camping trips.
Best time to go is winter, spring and fall when it is cooler and the flies and mosquitos aren’t as active. Late afternoon and nighttime tours are sometimes not available in the summer because of the nasty black flies and mosquitos. Best, probably, to take an early morning tour when the light is prettier and the bugs are resting.
The Okefenokee Swamp is 1 to 1.5 hours from Jacksonville Florida or Brunswick-St. Simon’s Island, Georgia.
