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Sarasota News Leader July 19, 2013 Where there is a cow, there is a cattle egret. Originally from Africa, these small white birds capture grasshoppers and other insects stirred up by grazing cows. The egrets arrived in South America in 1877 and made their way up to the U.S. by 1941. They have done so well here that, unfortunately, they displace some of our native birds. Page 77 lusian cattle mixed with breeds introduced by the English colonists to become our "Cracker" cows, now considered critically endangered. Eating scrub plants and whatever else they could find, these cattle became inured to the heat, mosquitoes, ticks, flies and other challenges served up by Florida. In Sarasota you can get a quick fix along Fruitville Road, where you will find what look like "prop" cows tucked in here and there on small parcels among the strip malls. Back roads in most jurisdictions have their share, too. Historians tell us that as early as 1700 there were 34 ranches and approximately 20,000 head of cattle. Thousands were pastured in the Alachua Savanna when William Bartram met Cowkeeper, a Seminole chief in 1774. Cattle have been part of the Florida scene for centuries. The cow you see today may have ancestry going back to the ones Ponce de Leon unloaded here in 1521. Many more were brought by the Spaniards on later expeditions. Descendants of those Spanish Anda- After the Seminole wars, rustling was commonplace. Free-roaming cattle were to be had for the taking — though it took some doing, as Tobias MacIvey, the main character in Patrick Smith's book, A Land Remembered, found out. Settlers built their fortunes on these cattle.