I lost mine because I couldn't wait to escape. The only soothing touch was to be had at the exit, and it was for cars, not people. As you left, you could stop your car under a tall metal hose that sent a hard shower across the windshield, to remove the splats of at least some of the love bugs. This is their season, for mating and death. It took not much more than an hour to get from that chaos to the beach where I saw the bobcat.
Bobcats still roam Hutchinson Island because they have a place to live.
Not all the woods have been plowed under. Not all the swamps have been drained. Condos, like the one I stayed in, appear only now and then. I have never lived anywhere that so simultaneously delighted and infuriated me as Florida. This state suffers from geographic schizophrenia.