I'm a fifth grader like you. I've sat in class, and sometimes it's great--and other times the clock seems to go in slow motion. I'm not an expert on the Everglades, but I do know when I'm bored with the same old information.

That's why I'm writing these columns for The Everglade Magazine, part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Everglades National Park. I hope I look at things more the way you do than your teachers. I'll try to find out some weird stuff for you!

For example, the park covers 1.5 million acres. It's hard to imagine how big that is, so think about this: We could stretch 21,707 average fifth graders lying down head-to-foot from one end of the park to the other. If we built one huge sports stadium there, we could fit 31,096 football fields. If it were a parking lot, we could park 19,990,295 cars. If a record company took over, they could cover it with over five and a half billion CDs!

Now that you have an idea of the park's size, next time I'll tell you how to use the World Wide Web to research those Everglades projects your teachers give you. Try this week's word search to see how much you know about the Web.

Remember, we will probably be around for the 100th anniversary in 2047. We want to make sure the adults leave us a park worth celebrating!

As I said before, I'm a fifth grader like you. One of the best information sources for our many projects is the INTERNET! Even if you don't own a computer, you can still get on line. Most public libraries have computers that connect to the Internet, and the librarians are helpful in getting you started. Or, if you have a computer and modem at home, ask a family member to help you get "connected."

Once you start using the World Wide Web you'll find it almost as much fun as Playstation or Nintendo. When you get on the "Web" you usually start with a program called a SEARCH ENGINE, which is a fancy name for a program that helps you find things. You can type in EVERGLADES or EVERGLADES AND ALLIGATORS and the program will give you hundreds of sites that deal with those subjects. Two common search engines are YAHOO and EXCITE.

I was going to review the best Web sites, but I thought that might take some of the fun out of finding them. I'll just give you two so you can get started: http://www.50years.com This is home base for the newsletter you are reading. quality.cqf.ch/~rrb/audubon/index.html This contains John James Audubon's 19th Century bird drawings, including those of South Florida.

Have you ever seen the white things growing on seagrass? Those are modern-day Bryozoans, which were common critters in the deep sea water 100,000 years ago. Back then, the sea level in Miami was 25 feet higher. Would your room be above the water?

Two processes involving the Bryozoans formed about 70 per cent of the rock in the Everglades. This rock is called Miami Limestone. (It's not coral rock, but many people make that mistake.)

In the first process, the new Bryozoans got together to make colonies on the remains of the old ones. In the second process, a chemical like the one in heartburn medicines was so common in the shallow water that it was constantly looking for a place to grab onto. Grains of sand were coated with this stuff until they formed small pearl-like stones called "ooids."

Then ice bergs at the poles consumed much of the Earth's water and the ocean level dropped to near where it is today. The little stones settled among the Bryozoans, and the two were squeezed together to make Miami limestone.

Fun fact: Over a long period of time, the acids from decaying plants "eat" holes in this limestone bedrock, creating solution holes. These holes fill with soil and form little pockets of lush vegetation. Cool, huh?

Activity: Take "ooids" and add "d." Unscramble for a square dance command. Take "limestone," drop the "t" and unscramble for a longtime resident of the Everglades. Take "zoo baby" and change one of the b's to an r; unscramble for an important Everglades organism.

(Answers to word scrambles: do-si-do, Seminole, Bryozoan.)

Many people don't realize that the Everglades is actually a river system. Marjory Stoneman Douglas once tried to teach people this concept in her book The Everglades: River of Grass. The "river of grass" is basically another term for the Everglades, because it's almost all sawgrass and water. In some areas the sawgrass is so thick you can't see the water! Sawgrass got its name because its leaves have edges so sharp they can make razor cuts on a person's exposed skin.

At one time, the river of grass was more than 60 miles wide! That would be 31,680 Sony Playstations lined up in a row! This shallow river stretched from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. That would be 31,133 Lamborghini Diablo VTTTs parked in a straight line!

Over time, people came and started building canals that disturbed the overflow of water from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades. That led to the canals draining water quickly to the ocean. Now the River of Grass is very shallow. The Everglades don't get enough water, and if we don't fix the system, all the people living here might not get enough water either!

Next time I'll talk about some interesting residents of the Everglades: snakes.

Activity: People usually cut the grass before it has a chance to flower, but try looking for some long grass (near a fence): You might find seeds on it. You can also use a tall blade of grass for a noisemaker! Split the middle of the blade about one-third the length of your thumb. Hold it tightly between both thumbs and blow!

Snakes have had a bad "rep" since Genesis. Remember Adam, Eve and the serpent? But snakes aren't really bad. In fact, they help us keep pesky rodent populations down. Most snakes aren't dangerous, even the poisonous ones -- if you leave them alone.

The Everglades are known for snakes. Many people are scared of them, but my dad used to collect them. Now my dad says you should never take things from the wild, but when he was in college he used to go out at four in the morning and get snakes off the road (NOT in the park) with a snake hook.

Twenty-six types of snake live in different habitats like trees, leaf litter and the underside of rocks. Eastern diamondback and pigmy rattlesnakes, cottonmouth moccasins and copperheads are all poisonous and pretty easy to identify. But the most poisonous one is the coral snake, and it looks a lot like the nonpoisonous scarlet king snake.

Both have red, black and yellow bands. The coral snake has a black nose and black bands between two yellow ones. The king snake has a red nose and yellow bands between two black ones. You're better off just not messing with either one, but here's an old way to tell the difference that could save your life: "Red on yellow hurts a fellow, yellow on black, poison lack."

Next time I'll talk about the "mountains" and "valleys" of the Everglades!

Try another word game! Take the names of the snakes in this article and find as many words within them as you can. I just tried REPTILIAN and found tile, nail, plane, retain and litter.

This is a strange title for an article about the Everglades. But the River of Grass is so shallow, it doesn't take much of a difference in elevation to affect the eco-system.

The "valleys" in the Everglades are called SLOUGHS (sounds like slew). These are the deeper sections of the River of Grass. In most of the Glades the water moves so slowly that you don't notice the flow. But in the deeper sloughs you can sometimes see a current. The sloughs are most important during the dry season when organisms that need water to live must either MIGRATE or ESTIVATE. Let me explain. Some animals appear to "know" where to travel, or migrate, to survive. Others estivate, or wait out, the dry weather where they are. They go into a long sleep-like state like a hibernating bear in which they neither eat nor drink.

During the dry season a slough is a concentration of activity. All the animals that are normally spread out are now crowded together. For you and me, it's a great time to see all these organisms in one spot. But for the animals it is as stressful as being in a crowded cafeteria line knowing that lunch is almost over! The best-known slough is Taylor Slough, featured at Anhinga Trail. The trail has elevated wooden boardwalks that allow you to see the wildlife.

The idea of mountains in the Everglades is really strange. Actually, in the old days, picture postcards of Miami were made in Germany. As the artists looked at pictures of Miami they would not see any mountains in the distance. They thought that must be a mistake! They would often draw a mountain range in the distance to "correct" the view.

The real mountains of the Glades are called HAMMOCKS. These "moun-tains" are really only two to seven feet above the surrounding area. This is just enough to have the roots of the trees be out of the water and have air get to them.

As trees grow on these elevated areas they eventually lose leaves, which decompose. The runoff of chemicals from this decomposition erodes the limestone around these hammock islands. The moats that form serve as protective barriers of water during fires, and water- filled rings during the dry seasons. When the white man came to the Everglades, the hammocks were filled with wonderful hardwood trees that were soon cut down.

The few remaining hammocks are those within the Everglades National Park area. Going into one of them is a real experience! The first sensation is a change of temperature and light (it gets cooler and darker). The next is the change in plants and animals (especially the mosquitoes -- there are more of them!). Some of the hammocks are actually man-made. The early Native Americans would use certain sites near the ocean for their campsites and over the years the shells they threw out after eating built up the level of the ground.

A common tree in the hammock is the GUMBO LIMBO. It has been called the "Tourist Tree" because of its red and peeling outermost bark. It is also a favorite "indicator" of archeologists when looking for elevated campsites of early Indians. Next time we will learn a little about these first Everglades residents.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HUH?!: The dictionary says a "hammock" is "a hanging support of canvas or netting suspended between two sup-ports." But a "hummock" is "a low mound or ridge, especially of earth." So is it hammock or hummock? In South Florida, it's hammock. And only in the EVERGLADES can you sleep IN a hammock and ON a hammock at the same time!

You will first notice the presence of the South Florida Indians while you are driving on the Tamiami Trail. However, the Miccosukees and Seminoles are more recent arrivals than the Calusa and Tequesta who used to live here. Several different Native American Indian groups once lived in Florida. These include the Calusa, Tocobaga, Tequesta, Apalachee, Timucua, Ais and Jaega (I'll get to the Seminoles and Miccosukees later).

About 15 to 17,000 years ago an ice age allowed a land bridge to form between Russia and Alaska. Then, people were able to migrate from Asia to the Americas. The first people arrived in Florida 12,000 years ago. When they arrived, Florida was much different than it is today. Magnificent herds of horses, bison, camels, and mastadon (an early elephant) lived on dry grasslands. These animals were preyed upon by sabre-tooth tigers, huge lions and Dire wolves. The early Indians survived as hunters, and their stone tools can be found today.

By about 11,000 years ago the Paleoindians had hunted the large Pleistocene animals to extinction. They began to rely heavily on deer as their major meat source, and later on food from the sea. Except for artifacts from archeological sites, most knowledge about native people comes from European explorers who made contact with them starting about 500 years ago. Unfortunately, along with giving the Indians harsh treatment, the Europeans also brought diseases. By the 1800s, most of the early tribes had vanished.

One hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. Not until the 1800s did Europeans venture deep into the Everglades. Soldiers chasing the local Indians soon found themselves in a difficult environment to survive.

A few books have been written by early explorers of this area, but the King expedition was one of the most memorable. In 1917 John King and two 16-year-old boys, his son John Jr. and William Catlow, set off on a two-week expedition that almost ended in the death of all three. All their supplies had to fit in the boat.

Soon after starting they realized the recent draining of the Everglades made it more of a wet grassland than a river. They each quickly wore through their shoes dragging the boat over the sharp rocks. The mosquitoes were so bad they used almost all their lamp oil to coat their bodies for protection.

Becoming lost and taking much longer than expected, they ran out of food and became sick from drinking the water, normally pure but now polluted with rotting fish killed by drainage. They had to deal with bears, poisonous snakes, cuts from sharp sawgrass and sunburn. Planes searched for them with no success.

Long after they were feared dead, the group reached the coast and was picked up by a passing boat. Their complete story ran for seven months in Forest and Stream Magazine and gave the rest of the country a glimpse of this harsh climate.

Yellowstone may be bigger, but the honor of being the wettest national park goes to Everglades National Park. Most of us think of a water park as something like Wet and Wild or Blizzard Beach at Disney World. The Everglades are so tied to water that even the deer are said to live a semi-aquatic existence. Before the building of drainage canals, the Everglades were truly a river. Now much of the water that used to flow south from Lake Okeechobee is used for watering crops or directed towards the ocean.

The present park is only 1/10 of the original area of wetland. But the water that is left is still really important to South Florida. During the rainy season the warm winds evaporate water in the the Everglades. As the water rises, eventually it cools again into tiny droplets that form clouds. Soon the clouds are blown over the eastern part of South Florida, making our "afternoon showers."

Another important function of the Everglades is their ability to filter water. As the water travels slowly past the plants and the microscopic critters of the Glades, it is cleaned of bacteria and other harmful things. Some experimentation has been done, taking sewer water and passing it slowly through a section of the Glades, and then testing the water. The water was drinkable! Now we dump most of our sewage into the ocean, but the Glades are also a great sewage reducer.

It seems like man has made a lot of mistakes with the Everglades. Some of them should have been avoided. But my dad often tells me I shouldn't judge the past with present-day information. When non-Indian people first came here, they thought of the Glades as wasted space and drained them to make farmland. Farms were needed to feed the new populations that were moving in, and also feed the northerners with products that could only be grown here in the winter. It made sense for the time but now seems like an avoidable mistake.

Try this experiment: Fill a glass with water and see how many days it takes for all the water to EVAPORATE!