Sweet, loveable, and odd all at the same time...

and no, this time I am not talking about my kiddos/family!

I am talking about Snooty, our town's Manatee mascot who lives at the South Florida Museum.
But manatees in general are just odd, adorable creatures.

Snooty!  He has lived at SFM since 1949...spoiled rotten!

See?!  Look, here's another...

They can stay under water for up to 20 minutes at a time.

And another...

These 2 are manatees being rehabilitated and will soon be released back into the real world soon.

We have been to see Snooty a couple times now and I find this odd creature (have I said that already!) so cute.  The closest relatives are the elephant if you can believe and that's because of their snouts.  They are herbivores, usually very fat (average 1000 lbs), extremely slow, can't see well, can live in both salt and fresh water, have no natural predators and are endangered.
They are endangered because of us humans and not for the reasons that you might think...they are endangered because they are so slow they can't get out of the way of boats and get hit by the propellers.  They have major rules for the speed of boats in waters where manatees might be but it still happens quite often.


So the majority of the year, the manatees are hanging all around town...in the inlets, canals, drainage outlets, the bays...all over but in the winter this is where they go...


 The Tampa Power Plant

We are all unhappy with this cold weather that we are enduring right now but manatees are especially sensitive to the cold and have learned where the warm waters are this time of year.  The plant actually has a viewing site where you can go and see the hundreds of manatees just hanging out...it's on our to-do list!

Gotta love all the worlds creatures!