Hiaasen grew up in Plantation, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale that was, at
the time, the westernmost fringe of civilization in south Florida,
literally on the edge of the Everglades. As he watched Florida being
settled by thousands of newcomers every year and watched his beloved
background turn into asphalt, he began to write furious diatribes about
the destruction of the Florida wilderness. Hiaasen based his popular
fictional character, Clinton "Skink" Tyree, on his boyhood friend Clyde
Ingalls, who committed suicide at the age of 17, partly in grief about
the devastation of his homeland.