I was planning my kayak trip on the Wakulla River all last week.
Yes, it's a beautiful river, but what I really wanted to see were the manatees that hang out there during the summer.
I paddled up the river, but instead of manatees, I saw five million turtles. Some of them were so big they could barely fit on their perches.
The pickerel weed was in bloom.
I saw two or three little blue herons like this one, and some egrets.
And an alligator. OK, the alligator was pretty exciting, even though I have gotten
pretty familiar with alligators since I moved to Florida. But by the time I turned around and headed back down river, I was disappointed. No manatees.
Then I went down this little passage by the side of an island, and I saw bubbles in the water. Then two immense shapes moved under my kayak. Two gray snouts surfaced with a whuffling sound, close enough for me to touch. The water was clear enough to see the propeller scars on their backs as they swam beside me.
If I had been underwater,
this is probably what it would have looked like.
But since I was in a kayak, and also I was busy shouting, "MANATEES! HELLO MANATEES!" -- this is the picture I got. That blobby thing in the middle of the picture is the manatee. Next weekend I hope I'll get some better manatee pictures.
I was planning my kayak trip on the Wakulla River all last week.
Yes, it's a beautiful river, but what I really wanted to see were the manatees that hang out there during the summer.
I paddled up the river, but instead of manatees, I saw five million turtles. Some of them were so big they could barely fit on their perches.
The pickerel weed was in bloom.
I saw two or three little blue herons like this one, and some egrets.
And an alligator. OK, the alligator was pretty exciting, even though I have gotten pretty familiar with alligators since I moved to Florida. But by the time I turned around and headed back down river, I was disappointed. No manatees.
Then I went down this little passage by the side of an island, and I saw bubbles in the water. Then two immense shapes moved under my kayak. Two gray snouts surfaced with a whuffling sound, close enough for me to touch. The water was clear enough to see the propeller scars on their backs as they swam beside me.
If I had been underwater, this is probably what it would have looked like.
But since I was in a kayak, and also I was busy shouting, "MANATEES! HELLO MANATEES!" -- this is the picture I got. That blobby thing in the middle of the picture is the manatee. Next weekend I hope I'll get some better manatee pictures. 
4 comments:
YES!!!
WOWZA!! Unbelievable. Why did the sign say "caution mantees" and not "Caution alligators"??? Aren't alligators more dangerous? Mantees look like stuffed animals.
It's the other way around; humans are dangerous to manatees -- especially humans in motor boats.
William says because of manatees, we must go to florida. He wants to catch manatees for the aquarium on the balcony.
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