Rawlings's Life: Florida Panther

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's Cross Creek is a novel of Florida history and its picturesque outdoors. It draws upon numerous and beautiful images of nature and its various habitants. From ants to termites and from cows to pigs, no other creature seems to be more feared than the Florida panther. Its menacing presence in the ancient Florida backwoods is a far cry from its stature in today's world-as an endangered species barely hanging on to existence. The Florida panther today is on the brink of extinction. In the days of Cross Creek, however, to kill a panther was commonplace and highly necessary for safety purposes. The actions against the Florida panther in Cross Creek are a reflection as to why the animal started to disappear from Florida in the first place.

Florida panthers are large, tawny-colored cats, once plentiful throughout the southeastern United States. Today, only about 30 to 50 of them roam in the remote cypress swamps and hardwood hammocks of Florida, south of Lake Okeechobee. The main reasons for its demise are partially due to habitat loss and, more importantly, hunting, as described in Cross Creek. The Florida panther of Cross Creek is essentially an enemy that is killed only to eliminate possible dangers. Rawlings, as usual in her writing, spares no details about the dreadfulness a panther attack can bring, as one such description explains: "a child [was] pounced on at the edge of a clearing"(157). Another description tells of its menacing approach: "Wagons followed; the sight of a lithe body like a tawny ghost, with its head in the gallberry bushes on one side of the road and its tail in the myrtle on the other"(157). The idea of a panther's stalking humans is nothing out of the ordinary. Panthers are built to hunt live prey. Deer and wild hogs are their preferred food, but when these animals are not available, panthers will eat raccoons, armadillos, and even alligators. While they are good sprinters, panthers rarely chase prey for long distances. Instead, prey is singled out, stalked, and ambushed, as Rawlings so graphically describes in her memoir.

The section of Cross Creek that highlights the existence of the Florida panther is Chapter 14, entitled "Toady-frogs, Lizards, Antses, and Varmints." The panther is undoubtedly the varmint in this collage of Southern wildlife, and Rawlings effectively describes the traits of the panther and the battle to keep it out of Cross Creek. She describes their presence as the "bright legend of fear," and their screams as "the shriek of a vampire woman, an insane shrill tremolo, half laughter and half moan"(157). What's also interesting about this chapter is how Rawlings seemingly predicts the panther's tragic future. Residents of Cross Creek and the neighboring communities continually hunted the panther for years, primarily for their own safety and the safety of their children. Rawlings concludes that there aren't any known panthers in the Cross Creek area, stating: "The panthers now in Florida are a few in Gulf Hammock and a number still in the Everglades . . . panthers were taken in plenty and still prowl the 'Glades, killing deer and cattle. No one knows what became of the last one in the Big Scrub" (158). To this day, the panther still primarily exists only in the Everglades, a direct result of towns all over Florida, such as Cross Creek, which forced the panther out for their citizens' own safety.

The biggest threat to the Florida panther today is not humans, however. Their health problems are their leading cause of death, problems derived from poor habitat conditions and genetic defects. The remaining 30 to 50 Florida panthers are all closely related, so breeding is nearly impossible. In addition, Florida panthers are killed by cars and trucks, particularly on State Road 29 and Alligator Alley. Although it's against the law, hunters still shoot panthers occasionally. Several plans to save the panther and its habitat have been underway now for the past several years and are making slow but steady progress. One plan to solve this problem is to move some panthers to Georgia to interbreed with bobcats.

One of the greatest powers of literature is that it can capture times, places, and people of the past in their respective realities. No matter what the Florida panther's future may be, the species will always have a place in Rawlings's literary classic, Cross Creek. Rawlings grasped the panther's character perfectly. The panther is something that is hunted, something to be feared, and, most importantly-an animal that represents the beauty of wild nature.

--Brian Nolan

Works Cited

• Rawlings, Majorie Kinnan. Cross Creek. New York: MacMillan, 1942. 157, 158
• The National Wildlife Federation Web Page. "The Florida Panther." October 19, 2002 (Website) --Brian Nolan