Mon, Aug 9, 2010
We journey to the "Big Easy," famous for streets packed with party fanatics, but they aren't alone. Mireya's on a treasure hunt to find as much wildlife as possible and even hopes to confirm a rumor about an unexpected urban invader-a feral hog. We'll follow as she searches through parks, swamps and city streets to find New Orleans's wildest animals-including large invasive rodents called nutria that have been devouring the New Orleans ecosystem. She goes on a late-night escapade with a city-hired hog-hunting squad to catch hogs in a central New Orleans park, and eats bayou food including frogs and bugs ... local style! Mireya later meets up with Ken Brown and Claudia Riegel, from the City of New Orleans Termite Control Board, who give her an inside look at mammoth colonies threatening some New Orleans landmarks. And she explores a cemetery, where she discovers wildlife between the tombs and has an unsettling encounter with a large feral hog.
Mon, Aug 16, 2010
Mireya Mayor travels to Rio de Janeiro, a city of more than 11 million people that sits on the edge of one of the world's largest forests-home to many species of birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. In Rio, the wild and the urban are constantly overlapping. Mireya is astonished to find giant African snails that can grow to 8 inches in length in an upscale suburb. She later witnesses a face-off between the world's largest rodent, the giant capybara, and a caiman crocodile. Mireya's odyssey continues with a break to climb to Rio's famous Cristo statue, where she finds a coati, a member of the raccoon family. And she checks out an urban lagoon to encounter the unpredictable Yacare caiman, a toothy crocodilian that thrives on the outskirts of Rio.
Mon, Aug 23, 2010
We take a trip to the back streets of Miami, Mireya's hometown, where the critters crawl from glamorous South Beach to neighborhood sandy beaches. She jumps in with bull sharks, wrestles an alligator twice her weight and straddles a giant sea turtle. For a change of pace, she turns her attention to helping control an unusual urban menace-hordes of chickens running amok in the streets. But things pick up when she tracks down a giant Burmese python, an invasive and formidable snake that has established itself in the Everglades and is slithering into Miami suburbs.