Yesterday morning it was pretty foggy out here so I waited a little while before heading out. Even though there was a little fog still hanging around the water was it's usual calm and clear. I had been out for about 30 minutes and it had been pretty uneventful, a few big snook and sheepshead under the Key Royal bridge but nothing to write home (or a blog) about.
I was cruising very close to some mangroves behind the Shell Point condos and getting ready to start heading back towards the house when it happened. Between me and the shore the calmness of the water was disrupted by a fairly large bubble rising to the surface followed by another and then another. As I stopped to try to figure out what was going on I quickly realized that they were coming from the back end of a full grown and well camouflaged manatee laying very still and calmly munching on some grass on the shoreline and merrily farting while eating.
There are quite a few of these guys that live around here so it's not totally unusual to see them swimming off the beach or in the bay. I've also seen them several times from the paddleboard but it's always been just a passing encounter as they slowly swam by, but this was different. He or she (I didn't look) was really enjoying breakfast and wasn't going to be disturbed by some old guy on a paddleboard hovering within arms reach.
I'm not sure who enjoyed that ten minutes or so more, him with a hearty breakfast of sea grass or me being able to watch it from such a close range. I'm very grateful that little toot tipped me off as to what was right under my board and for the time spent with this very cool and unusual looking animal.
http://www.savethemanatee.org
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| Beats working! |
