A Once in a blue-moon experience

For Mainers such as ourselves, seeing something like this in the wild is quite a treat.  If you look in the water you'll see a pretty good sized manatee.  This manatee, and the friends that followed her, are the reason we made the trip to this local boat launch.  Our first experience with manatees in the while happened about 3 years ago when RocketBoy was 12.  My grandmother had mentioned that there were a couple of places she wanted to bring us, to show us the local sites.  One of those places was this boat dock where local residents are very protective of these wonderful and amazingly curious animals. 

We had seen some manatees at Sea World just a couple of days earlier, and had learned that Sea World is the leading organization involved with the Manatee Rescue in Florida.  We saw the manatees they house up close, and observed in striking detail, the reasons these manatees were being rehabilitated.  The propeller scars that dragged the length of their backs, the missing chunks of tail... the beating these calm and friendly gentle giants can take out there in the wild is incredible. 

Generally speaking, contact with the manatees is strictly prohibited, however the locals in this particular area find it difficult to say "no" to a hungry manatee who ventures to the boat launch for some local vegetation, lettuce, or other greens people may have on hand.  Initially, we were very wary of making any sort of contact with the manatees, as you can see in this video.  We didn't want to upset their natural way of living, or teach them any sort of life altering "bad manners" which might lead them to be harmed in the future.  However, there was a woman at the boat launch who told us stories of the area, and of the manatees and their associations with people.  She said she'd been coming to this particular boat launch for something 30 years, and the manatees have never failed to seek out a quenching for their thirst of curiosity.  She explained that the local residents are very careful when they put their boats in the water "around here" and for as long as she's been coming to see the manatees she's known people to feed them, but never get in the water with them.  She described the local laws and told us if we frequented the area enough we'd notice visitors who may want to take advantage of the situation (having so many manatees available so often) and the

 "locals" who remind them what the law is.  Legally, for the protection of the manatees, there's not supposed to be any human contact with between the animals and people-observers.  She further explained that local law enforcement are fully aware of what goes on at this boat launch, and so long as manatees aren't being physically endangered or harmed in any way, they give curious onlookers a little bit of leeway to explore the manatee experience.

I have to tell you, I really live for this stuff.  They're such beautiful creatures.  Their demeanor is nothing but passive, and they inspire a level of curiousity within me that allows me to experience something "for the first time"...  as though I were a child again.