Manatees, mangroves and fond memories
As I gazed at the manatees gliding through the glass tank, the schoolchildren squeaked with excitement. Or was that me? It was the first time I’d ever seen these creatures up close, and a silly grin was spreading across my face. If I’d been a cartoon, hearts would have exploded around my head at the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature in South Florida, where manatees can recuperate after they get injured by boat propellers and fishing lines, orphaned or exposed to deadly neurotoxins of red tide.
You may remember that my son Didi adores manatees; he sleeps with a big gray stuffed one he’s dubbed Heavy. His twin brother, Gege, reserves his affections for a giant squid, known as Big.
I’d been teaching creative writing at a nearby conference last month and I couldn’t resist a chance to see them — even though I felt guilty too, for experiencing what both my sons would have loved to see.
A toddler stood on the ledge, cuddled by his caregiver, who cooed, “Wave hello to the manatee! Blow a kiss!”
With a powerful flap of its tail fluke, a manatee rose up from the bottom of the tank.
“They’re huge,” I uttered, even though I would learn that these were youngsters (an adult manatee is about 10 feet long and weighs 800 to 1,200 pounds).
Its lips — its face? — flapping, another manatee gobbled on romaine lettuce, a standin for the sea grasses they would consume in the wild. Their keepers also feed them endive, escarole, iceberg lettuce, carrots and potatoes.
“How do they get so big, just on lettuce?” another patron asked, during the manatee presentation on the second level, as we gazed down into their tank.
“They’re not very jiggly,” their caregiver explained. Their bulk wasn’t due to fat, but their large digestive system, she explained. They consume up to 9% of their body weight in aquatic vegetation daily.
That’s a lot of trips to the salad bar! Indeed, the four sirenians in the tank seemed to be eating nonstop during my visit, in between gliding around the tank and coming up for air every few minutes.
After a sharp exhalation, a manatee splashed, then slipped back under the surface.
“I felt its breath, on my face,” a man said in amazement.
A snout poked up, and then I felt its breath too, in a moment of connection with faroff mammal cousins who diverged long ago on the family tree.
I suspect the manatee had far less gooey feelings about me. Still, as the woman at the front desk said, “I just look at them and everything is OK and all right with the world. They’re so gentle.”
Tragically, Snooty — a 69yearold manatee, and the world’s oldest — drowned in 2017 at the museum after getting trapped in an area that was supposed to remain bolted shut.
The next day, I went in search of more manatees a few miles away, off Lido Island. In winter, manatees are said to congregate by hot springs or warm discharge from power plants. We didn’t find any, but I found myself amazed nonetheless as we kayaked through mangrove tunnels, where the branches arched above us and the roots tangled densely below.
It was a fun technical challenge, figuring out how to navigate through the narrowing tunnels of the mangroves. As I paddled, I kept thinking about a cartoon movie from my childhood, “The Rescuers” from 1977, which takes place in a swamp, the Devil’s Bayou. Though I didn’t remember seeing the movie itself, I had a picture book that came with a red cassette tape, featuring the two plucky mice, riding an airboat powered by a dragonfly.
Later, talking to my husband, he chuckled with delight: he’d owned the same picture book, and could still remember the theme song: “RESCUE. Rescue Aid Society/ Heads held high, touch the sky/ You mean everything to me.”
For those of us on the younger end of Gen X, the movie seems a cultural touchstone — the first time we ever saw a movie in a theater, or a cassette we played over and over again in a time with fewer entertainments. After I returned from Florida, we watched it with Didi and Gege, and found it dated in some aspects, but charming in others. With them, I’ve had a chance to reflect upon my childhood and live through it again.
As the movie ended, my sons gave it their highest recommendation. “Can we watch it again? Is there a sequel?”
“I just look at them and everything is OK and all right with the world. They’re so gentle.”
Museum staffer on manatees