Tailpipe loves those elusive, cuddly sea cows that loll around in the shallows hereabouts, like Kirstie Alley in a bathtub. If only he could find them. Last time he looked — and looked and looked — there was nary a manatee to be found.
Still, a lot of money has been raised in the name of manatees since they were deemed endangered in the early 1970s. The Save the Manatee Club, co-chaired by Jimmy Buffett, takes in more than a million dollars a year through donations and sales of license plates. Folks can "adopt" a manatee at $25 a pop or pay $10 for the chance to name a manatee pup.
Now, FAU's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce is getting in on the game in a big way. The institute recently received a $5.8 million federal grant from the Army Corps of Engineers to install manatee detectors on the six navigation locks around Lake Okeechobee.
This is definitely a diamond-studded example of endangered-species programs. There are an estimated 3,000 manatees in all of Florida, so the "manatee acoustic detection sensor protection system" works out to just under $2,000 per sea cow. And that's only if you assume that each of these mammals will at some point pass through one of those gates. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, locks or gates have caused at least 191 manatee deaths statewide since 1974.
Just a thought. Save those hard-working Army engineers a lot of sweat by assigning an intern with a rowboat to each manatee. Whenever one of the beloved bovine sea grazers approaches an underwater lock, there's an intern there, ready to chauffeur him to the other side.
Miracle Fruit
Curtis Mozie, a 64-year-old retired postal worker, doesn't look like an exotic horticulturalist. But strolling around his west Fort Lauderdale house in shorts and black socks pulled high on his thin legs, he guides you through a gallery of hard-to-find fruit growing on trees and bushes on the property. There are scotch bonnets, ice cream beans, and dragon fruit. "But that one there," he says, indicating an inconspicuous bush about five feet tall, "that's the miracle fruit."
Miracle fruit — Synsepalum dulcificum — is a small berry from West Africa. The "miracle" is the startling effect of the fruit on human tongues. After eating one of these tart fruits, which look like elongated cherries, everything that should taste sour tastes sweet. Mozie is the biggest commercial grower of miracle fruit in North America.
An ardent skeptic, the 'Pipe was at Mozie's place to see if this miracle is really more hype than heavenly power. Mozie, a brisk, energetic man, was happy to demonstrate just how this tiny berry can blow someone's mind.
He reached under some of the firm leaves on his plant and carefully clipped off a bright red sample. On one end of the oval-shaped fruit is a stem; at the other end is what looks like a thin hair protruding. "That's the tail," Mozie says. He washed it with a garden hose and picked off the stem and hair.
"Bite into it," he says. "You should feel the skin slide right off. Careful not to eat the pit." The fruit is tart, like a mild grape. "Rub it all over your tongue."
Then Mozie pulls out a jug of water and a lime. He pours the water into a cup and cuts a few slices from the lime.
"Squeeze the lime into the water," he instructs. "Now have a taste."
It tastes like Country Time lemonade with a pound of sugar added. The lime itself tastes sweeter than a peach. 'Pipe can't stop licking his own fingers (yeah, wiseguy, Tailpipe does have fingers), which, covered with lime, taste like Pixy Stix.
"Women love it," he says. "It makes their boyfriends taste like candy."
Mozie pulls a beer from his refrigerator. It's like it was made from mangoes and pears. He pours a shot of pure white vinegar into a cup. Vinegar! No puckering up here. The stuff tastes like warm soda.
This fruit, whose sweetening effects last about two hours, could change the way Americans consume everything, Mozie says. For diabetics, it can be turned into a sugar-free additive. For cancer patients, it could eliminate the post-chemo metallic taste in their mouths.
'Pipe remembers having to choke down disgusting cough syrup when he was a young emissions-venting cylinder. With Synsepalum in the medicine cabinet, getting children through strep throat could be a lot easier.
A few scientists have studied the plant. In the '60s, researchers isolated the active protein, which has been dubbed Miraculin. The fruit is so delicate, Mozie explains — it withers away three or four days after being picked — that it makes research difficult.
Unfortunately, the fruit also takes a long time to cultivate. Mozie has some young plants in his backyard, no taller than five inches. "Those are six months old," he says. It takes three years to bear fruit, complicating commercial endeavors.
Mozie first encountered miracle fruit 12 years ago in an exotic-fruit market in Davie. When the proprietor gave him miracle fruit, he was stunned. "I didn't believe what was going on in my mouth," he says. "I knew there was money to be made on these things."
He started buying plants immediately. Now he has ten acres of miracle-fruit plants growing on a farm in Davie. And it's still not enough to keep up with demand, he says. He sells the fruit for $3 each, with a minimum order of $100. In one week earlier this year, he grossed $135,000.
His customers are generally the cosmopolitan type, he says. Wealthy enough to afford $3 berries, anyway. Miracle fruit is popular at what Mozie calls "flavor tripping parties," where the host provides plenty of sour foods and drinks and then implores guests to trick their tongues with the effect of the berries.
Back at the house, where Mozie has bags of Miracle Gro in stacks along the outside walls, Mozie points out a few more of his exotic plants in the backyard. They come from all over the world. Here's lemongrass. Allspice. Bay rum. Passion fruit. Papaya. Sugar apple.
Is there anything that Mozie can't grow?
"A beard," he says with a smile.
Ill-American
The timing was just so convenient. Hollywood's then-Mayor Mara Giulianti was embroiled in a red-hot campaign last summer to keep her job. She was desperate for evidence to suggest she had finally turned the city around.
Then the National Civic League, like the spirit of Christmas, stepped forth, offering awards for cities that demonstrate "civic infrastructure," "community celebration," and "community projects." Those who won the awards would be declared All American Cities.
Hollywood had all of those things in spades (the city is just about one big "project," isn't it?), and with some guidance from city officials, it had an expenses-paid delegation on its way to Anaheim to make Hollywood's case.
But wait. Was that Hollywood's own money or a federal grant, awarded to the city with strings attached?
Ah, what's the diff? Housing director Neal Herst, two other city officials, and five "at-risk" youngsters in a Hollywood summer program (along with one parent) made the trip. They stayed in a first-class hotel in Anaheim and swept up the award, whose bestowal was soon broadcast from streetlights and fences all over the city. Hollywood, the All American City.
This curmudgeonly old car part was the first to report that the award was financed, in part, through a $10,000 chunk of Hollywood's community development block grant, funds that are supposed to go toward housing for low-income residents ("Everybody's All-American," August 16, 2007). Other expenses were paid through the generosity of developers and lobbyists like attorney Alan Koslow. There were, of course, no quid pro quos involved there, even though the Giulianti administration had a long history of giving Koslow and his developer clients whatever he asked for.
So when news broke last week that the federal government had taken an interest in this subject, the only question was: Why did it take so long? A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development refused to say whether it had launched a formal investigation or whether its officials are merely in a fact-finding stage.
It certainly wasn't a good omen that the spokesman suggested 'Pipe consult an official at the Office of the Inspector General, which is the destination for the cases where HUD suspects its money was mishandled. A spokesman for that office said he could "neither confirm nor deny an investigation" of Hollywood. Gulp.
And, oh yeah, you remember what happened in January. Giulianti got beat in the mayoral election by Peter Bober.
