My children’s awesome best-friend-of-the-family-who’s-so-close-to-us-we-call-her-aunt gave one of my kids a manatee for Christmas. You’re thinking of a stuffed animal shaped like a football with a goofy grin on its face. Nope. A manatee. An actual one. See? You don’t get to be a best-friend-of-the-family-who’s-so-close-to-us-we-call-her-aunt of mine without being as weird as I am.
Once my kiddo opened the gift and there was a picture of a manatee that we apparently now have to feed, walk, and cleanup after, I was suspicious. I don’t know anything about care and maintenance of your manatee. I would kill this animal faster than a ring toss goldfish if I wasn’t careful. I had to Google “manatees” to see what was going on with this thing.
As it turns out, manatees are endangered. Way to go, Aunt. You not only gave me a live animal to take care of, but you gave me an ENDANGERED one? Heck, the thing was endangered the minute you attached my name to it! There are a couple of times a week I have to think really hard about whether or not the kids got fed, and they’re sitting right in front of me!
While Googling “how to not kill your manatee,” I got distracted by all the shiny facts about manatees. Did you know that the rumors about hottie mermaids swimming around the ship in the olden days were probably manatee sightings? Do you know how long you must have been at sea AND how delirious from lack of fresh drinking water you had to be to think a manatee was a half-human, half-fish who was giving you a sexy look? Sailors had to have been really hard up for some tail (get it?) if they thought manatees were Ariel rocking the shell bra.
I also learned that manatees are just about the dumbest migrating animals ever, since they go north in the winter and south in the summer. I’m sure they have their reasons, I just don’t know what they are. Still, being football-shaped, dumb, and possibly overtly sexual towards lonely sailors does not mean they should get run over by a boat, which is apparently the leading cause of death for manatees. Not sailor STDs, like I originally thought when I read that whole “they’re not mermaids” thing.
Manatees don’t bother a soul, they just like to kind of loll about in the water and eat these cabbage-shaped things. You never hear about rabid manatee attacks, and they don’t go around leaking a sex tape, staging fake weddings, or having Kanye West’s babies like some other creatures we know. They just float there, minding their own business, probably trying to have lots of manatee sex so they can stop being on the endangered species list, when BAM! They get hit by a redneck driving a speedboat. Have you ever been hit by a boat while having sex? Humans would be endangered too if every time we tried to reproduce some dumbass ran us over with an Evinrude.
That’s why we all have to adopt a manatee. Thanks to our crazy aunt, we are now part owners of a manatee named Zewie. It apparently takes a lot of money to keep a manatee as fat and happy as they like to be, so we are, like, 1/53rd-part owners of this animal. I hope we got the left flipper. Because his other flipper is kind of messed up looking from being hit by a boat propeller. Possibly while having sex. But it wasn’t with a sailor, so it’s okay.
NOTE: You can adopt your own 1/53rd of a manatee by clicking HERE. They’re such cool people that they not only have live-streaming manatee cams that you can watch instead of cat videos on YouTube, but they don’t even mind that this was probably the stupidest article about manatees ever. And possibly the most slanderous towards both manatees and sailors.
Lorca Damon 
[…] my blog post about my Aunt Gertie being a ho that turns Madison Avenue off, or maybe the one about manatees catching STDs. The post where I let readers vote on whether or not that thing growing on my face was cancer or […]
Once upon a time, my late husband gleefully accompanied me from east coast of FL to the west so I could see the manatees reported to be enjoying unseasonably warm water/weather. I was SO excited. I was thrilled that he was excited, too. That is, until he about half way there, with a great big smile, and great sincerity, he said, “These must really be SOME amenities for us to drive this far to get ’em.”
I’m dying. That is priceless!
Gotta live a manatee, even though they kind of look like they got stuck somewhere along the evolutionary path! Not only are you a douche if you kill one, you can fined a lot of money for just touching one. So if one happens to swim right up to you, no matter how tempting it is– do not touch! Speaking from experience…
Ouch! You got groped by a manatee AND you got fined??? Talk about blaming the victim!
Got off with a warning. Glad that’s not on my permanent record!
They didn’t make you register on a manatee offender list? What is society coming to??? (Just kidding, I know that endangered species have to be protected from the actual douches who would hurt them just for the fun of it.)
I really like finding a lot of money for touching one. And since I live near them – I cant wait to try my luck! jk. I’m SO nicer in person – and I am NO Ana Gloria Garcia Gutierrez!
Lol! I should stop typing on my iPhone without my reading glasses! 😉 I used to live near them. Alas, the Florida real estate crash forced me to run home to family in Tennessee…
Welcome to my manatee family! We’ve adopted percentages of manatees for years. Actually I love ’em. They are so placid and cow-like. And I did get run over by a boat once but it wasn’t in the midst of having sex with a sailor.
I sneaked out to water ski and wouldn’t ya know it… got hit by a boat and ended up in the hospital and grounded for like a year…
Don’t do that to your manatee!
Thanks for the laugh, Lorca!
Don’t ground it or don’t hit it? Because if I ever ground some that size, it will be with an actual meat grinder to make yummy, yummy burgers! Mmmmm…manatee burgers…you know, those things are probably really tender. They never walk and they’ve been marinating for their entire life spans!
Can you imagine if Harper Lee had read this article before writing her book? And then we’d all be like, oh yeah, “to kill a manatee.” Because you SHOULDN’T kill a manatee because they never did anything except for make beautiful music. Except they don’t. That was mockingbirds.
Killing a manatee is not quite as poetic.
I’m dying here. I’m actually dying from that. And if I were technologically savvy enough, I’d tweet you a picture of my AUTOGRAPHED COPY of To Kill A Manatee. I mean, To Kill A Mockingbird. (Guess where she signed it??? Go ahead…guess…IN HER HOUSE!)
I’M NOT REALLY LITERALLY DYING OF JEALOUSY, because everyone uses literally and figuratively wrong. Although I guess, I KIND OF am literally dying from jealousy, because TECHNICALLY, if you’re a pessimist, every second we’re one second closer to death etc etc etc.
BUT SERIOUSLY.
SO JEALOUS.
I wanted to be Scout when I first read that book. Like, I insisted people call me Scout, for at least a day and a half. But then all my friends gave me weird looks and THAT, my friends is why you shouldn’t let a first grader read To Kill A Mockingbird.
No. That is ABSOLUTELY why you SHOULD let first graders read it! Because they turn out uber-cool!
I wish we could favorite comments on here. I WOULD STAR THE CRAP OUT OF THIS.
We can get rich if we invent that. How good are you with a computer?
I can do what I need to do. I know people though. I know all sorts of people.
Just getting ready to pack up in the office at the end of a long cold week and head into the weekend and I took a chance on reading you before I got home and glad I did too. So, so funny and has set me up for the long drive home from the office (15 minutes, 25, if there is heavy traffic) gotta love those best-friend-of-the-family-who’s-so-close-to-us-we-call-her-aunt, we have one who is a best-friend-of-the-family-who’s-so-close-to-us-we-call-him-uncle who is just as gregarious with his gift giving
Aww! Sometimes those relatives are closer than our own families! Be very careful to look out for manatees on the drive home.
Thanks for the laugh this morning. I love manatees. They are very gentle creatures and don’t harm a soul. This being said, more efforts should be made to help manatees. How sailors used to think these not-so-attractive creatures were sexy mermaids is beyond me though…too much to think about what might have been going through their heads. LOL
I dunno. After months of crossing the ocean with no one but your fellow scurvy-ridden, lice-infested crew mates to keep you company, those manatees start lookin’ pretty good. Or at least, clean.