Wild Life In Palm Bay

When I was a child, around 12 years old, my mother bought a house in Palm Bay Florida. When we moved there for a couple of years before moving back to New York City, there was an abundance of wildlife that resided in the wooded areas. The diversity of animals was wide and included turtles, snakes, deer, and what I considered exotic birds. The place where we would ride our bikes to play, camp and swim were a lake in the woods with all sorts of fishes. Rabbits, possums, and raccoons were everywhere. 20 years went by and my family returned to Florida while I lived in New York City. When I came to visit the area had become well developed. There were shopping centers everywhere and streets that had maybe one or two homes were populated with so many more homes that it was hard to find an empty wooded lot like there were in 1988. The animals that still remained in the area would try to move from one wooded area to another often lay dead in the street as road kill due to the high volume of traffic in the area now. The exotic birds have migrated to parts of Florida where there is less human activity. The lake where we played and swam in is now inaccessible and going into the area would now be considered trespassing.