I’ve learned a lot about nature on this trip.

We were at a sort of fancy restaurant the other night. I had one of the best veggie burgers that I’ve ever had. The husband had trout. One of the high muckity mucks of the restaurant came over to see if everything was ok. The husband said that he liked the trout. The guy went off on this story about how the restaurant has a guy who only goes out on the boat for a day or two at a time and then comes back to port so the fish is always fresh caught. This story went on for a bit in a swirl of pride about their great local and fresh sourcing of ingredients until the husband said, “Trout is a fresh water fish.” Spoil sport.

This lead us to start speculating over the next few days about why the trout might be in the ocean. We’ve decided that they watched The Little Mermaid and took Sebastian at his word that Under the Sea is the place to be so they have migrated.

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The following conversation happened halfway down to Key West when we started coming across signs saying that we were entering the habitat of endangered Key Deer. My thoughts will be in bold type representing how upright, scientific, and correct they are. The husband’s will be in italics because he is slightly off center.

Why are there deer here?
There are deer everywhere.
On the mainland but we are 50 miles off shore. How did they get here?
They are like rats. Rats turn up everywhere.
Rats get places on ships. They are little and can sneak onboard and not be noticed. Deer can’t do that.
They could if they were in disguise.
Like a trench coat and a hat? I think they’d be noticed.
I think you underestimate deer. They are sneaky bastards.
Now I need to look this up.
You don’t need to do that. I told you what happened.
It says that they evolved here to the size of dogs. They had to be here for a long time. They didn’t charter a fishing boat.
They could have.

It turns out that Key Deer migrated over the land bridge that was between the keys during the Wisconsin Glaciation. No fishing boats were involved.