On Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:09:18 -0400, Secular Humouresque
wrote:

Hanging With Manatees

Manatee: Mmmm, tastes like eagle, or so we like to say here in SWFL.

A little known fact about Manatees that you will not hear from their
fervent, manatee hugging supporters, is how they got to Florida in the
first place.

Of course the official name for them is "West Indian Manatee" which
offers some clue to their origin. It turns out that the Spanish
conquistadors found them very tasty, and they would stock up on them
whenever they could capture some in the so called West Indies, mostly
the island of Hispaniola, now known as Hati and the Dominican
Republic. Capturing them is relatively easy since they are slow and
not very intelligent, unlike dolphins which play around moving boats
all the time and never get hit. The conquistadors would store them in
the bilge and use them as a source of fresh meat aboard ship. Of
course the waters of south Florida are shallow with many hidden
shoals. As a result, the Spanish lost a lot of ships here, and the
manatees would escape into the local environment. And so, another so
called engangered species was born. Meanwhile millions in
governmental resources are being wasted on manatee protection,
sometimes to the point of absurdity. A local power plant, for
example, made changes to increase efficiency, and as a result
discharged less heated water into the Caloosahatchie River.
Environmentalists successfully sued to force reinstatement of the warm
water discharge so that the manatees would not become too cool in the
winter time. In appreciation manatees by the hundreds now congregate
there every winter, literally wallowing in their own fecal matter.