Florida already has invasive Burmese pythons, Nile crocodiles, herpes monkeys and capybara, but in February it added one of the world's largest predatory freshwater fish, which can grow up to 10-feet long and weigh over 400 pounds. While on a winter walk along the Caloosahatchee River,
Cape Coral resident Leah Getts spotted a dead arapaima, which is a massive non-native fish typically found in South America's Amazon Basin, reported Fort Myers news station WBBH.
"It was bigger than my 7-year-old. I thought that is nothing I've ever seen before. It was kind of white with a pinkish tail," Getts told the station. "It had a huge kind of open bass looking kind of mouth. It didn't look like anything I had heard of or seen before."
But that wasn't the only slice of wild Florida that dominated traffic on our website. An
alligator chasing some guy fishing for tarpon climbed the analytics and so did Henry Sadler, a St. Petersburg science teacher who was diving with a friend in Central Florida when they uncovered a
50-pound leg bone from a Columbian Mammoth, an extinct distant relative of the Asian elephant that last roamed the Earth over 10,000 years ago.
See the rest of CL's most read news stories of 2021 below.
Every single stingray at a ZooTampa touch tank mysteriously died
In May, ZooTampa officials said 12 stingrays housed at the Stingray Bay exhibit. An investigation eventually found the cause of death to be gas bubble disease, aka embolisms similar to what happens to scuba divers who get "the bends." Stingray Bay will not reopen and a new exhibit is in the works.
Feds, Dave Bautista want to know who carved "TRUMP" into a manatee's back
Less than a week after the insurrection the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it was seeking information regarding a manatee that was discovered with
"Trump" scraped into its back near the Blue Hole on the Homosassa River. Days later, Dave Bautista, a former WWE wrestler and "Guardian of the Galaxy" cast member,
offered a $20,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of whoever did it. Your crazy, Alex Jones-loving uncle naturally blamed it on Antifa.
Vaccines, politicized
It should come as no surprise, but the Florida GOP found a way to politicize a life-saving vaccine. In January, as the initial vaccine rollout started, Publix was only offering vaccine in Florida
counties won by Republicans. DeSantis said the initial rollout was focused on areas where hospital systems might need assistance and where there are large senior populations, but a late 2021 study found that plan definitely
hurt communities of color. Not to be outdone, Florida GOP Chair Joe Gruters and Rep. Anthony Sabatini, the very same month, announced
plans to speak at the Florida Freedom Rally, also happening on one of the busiest days during the Legislative committee week. The event appeared to be organized by Florida chapters of anti-vax groups, Moms For Freedom, and the Conscious Coalition. Mercifully, but was mercifully postponed.
The Supreme Court's push to turn 14th Amendment into a privilege that legislatures can remove
Not surprisingly, CL's only non-Florida column took a ton of traffic when its author, Jeffrey C. Billman rightfully skewered SCOTUS' attempts to dismantle Roe v. Wade.
Get me out of here
Florida is... interesting, so it wasn't a shock to see stories about new flight paths out of here get a lot of attention. Oddly enough, CL readers really wanted to take nonstop flights to
Savannah and
Key West. Whatever, people, just wear a mask, OK?
Labor of love
After hearing several local business owners complain that they can't find employees for hourly work, Florida man Joey Holz set about his experiment
applying to 60 entry-level jobs in a month to prove the so-called "labor shortage" is a myth. His findings are documented in a spreadsheet, and after continually applying for jobs tied to owners who publicly complained about a lack of applicants, he said he only received one interview, at which point the business owner attempted to walk back the pay of $10/hour offered in the listing.
Browne town
In January, as Florida broke new coronavirus records and literally led the country in cases of the new highly-infectious UK variant, Tampa megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne decided to hold
a packed, maskless indoor service. Since his arrest in March 2020 for defying shutdown orders and holding services during the pandemic, the local evangelical pastor and conspiracy theorist held his weekly services in the parking of The River Tampa Bay Church. But he eventually moved his congregation back indoors. The move was in stark contrast to county rules for businesses, but those rules didn't apply to churches able to flaunt precautions because of Gov. DeSantis' decision to exempt religious entities. God will provide, we guess.
In the face of HB1 "anti-riot' legislation, Black Lives Matter activists marched out of Tampa's Cyrus Green Park
With legislation hell bent on criminalizing protest dominating the news, apprehension surrounding Florida's new anti-dissent, 1A-crackdown legislation most definitely affected turnout at the April rally. Organizers said they could see a couple thousand come up, but less than a thousand, still spirited, demonstrators actually hit the street.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani shares creepy Gaetz and Greenberg voicemail with CL
Last spring, Orlando-based Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani posted a thread to Twitter, detailing an incredibly uncomfortable voicemail from Congressman Matt Gaetz and former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, two Florida Republicans currently under investigation for underage sex crimes. Eskamani shared the 27-second voicemail, which she says was sent on July, 4, 2019, with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, and you're right to think that it's creepily disgusting.
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