Manatees are the hippies of the sea, and who can help but love them? They have a distinctly amorphous, blobby shape, but for reasons untold, are immediately recognizable by their shapeless profile. For reasons less understood, sailors used to confuse Manatees for mermaids, which is telling about what long voyages and scurvy do to a man's taste in women.
Manatees are vegetarians, and they have enemies like propellers and foul algae. These guys are just too precious. They just float around. They even get moved around by hurricanes, deposited in water hazards, private pools and canals. Manatees are hapless, and they are gentle and they like warm weather. In fact, Manatees are curious. The big lugs just like to amble around and explore. They're like travel journalist who neither travel nor keep journals.
If people were just a little bit more like Manatees, the world would hum along at a slow, sunny pace. Every day would be Sunday afternoon as we floated to work, the sun on our back. Lunch would last all day, and no one would ever run or shove.
Seals are fat, seals are vicious, seals are like too many humans. But Manatees, they aren't fat, they are just big boned.
Manatees don't have blubber, at all, that's why they are condemned to a lazy life in warm waters. They aren't fat, they are just naturally lumpy. And as life gives lumps and takes lumps, just, every once in while, take them like a Manatee.
