Manatee

     These creatures are truly Gentle Giants. They are one of the most easy going animals you'll ever meet, they love to just hang out with their friends and family and play, take it easy and eat. Note that they are NOT dumb, they are very smart.

The best place to see them are at power plants in the winter. The power plants pump out water that's kind of warm, so being smart fellers the manatees gather there to hang out and warm up. I recommend Big Bend in Apollo beach if you are in Tampa, or a little further north is Crystal River, which is where I took these pictures.

Why so many Manatees are hit:
Unfortunately, as you may or may not know, many manatees in Florida each year are killed by these assinine power boats. The manatees are smart, they hear the boat at a good distance about 100 feet and start to submerge, but they are big and it takes a couple seconds. Well, of course, these retards in their macho boats are usually going like 60-100mph (literally) and they just run right over the poor manatees, and chop them up with their propellers. Animals just cannot move as fast as machines. It is really rough stuff, could make a grown man cry.

And all these manufacturers would have to do would be to put propeller guards or slow down these monstrous boats (I hate these things and their owners as you can tell) Well, of course, then the boat owners would complain, it would cost an extra few hundred dollars to put a propeller guard, my god, and these boats only costs 10's and 100's of thousands of $$$. It's rare to see a manatee that doesn't have propeller marks. Here's my first update to these pages in 6 years: Turns out the above mentioned manufacturors of power boats are trying to get manatees taken off the endangered species list. Cant have living beings getting the way of boat sales, now can we?

Hello! Checking out visitors at Homosassa Springs. The park rangers there will feed them, and lecture about manatees. Homosassa is a GREAT place, I REALLY recommend it to nature lovers.

Manatees are vegetarians (like yours truly) and are very fond of carrots.

Yet another picture of a manatee swimming. Sometimes for fun, they just do barrel rolls to show they are happy. They are excellent swimmers, and are actually graceful despite their large size.