RX: "What? 'All over Table Mountain'?"
Me: "Oh, yes, they go flopping up the sheer slopes to their traditional breeding grounds at the summit."
RX: "Wait..."
Me: "It's where they lay their eggs!"
RX: "I don't think these are the kind of manatees I'm familiar with."
I presume that while the manatees are flopping their way up Table Mountain to perform their celebrated mating dances and lay their eggs, the hyraxes are journeying downhill to their breeding grounds in the shallows off the Cape?
ReplyDeleteThey are called Sirenians because early sailors saw the tail flukes and confused them with mermaids.
ReplyDeleteThere are supposed legends of sailors getting jiggy with manatees, both recreationally and involving certain superstitions.
manatee gals won'cha come out tonight
Come out tonight
Come out tonight....
Wow, this is just going in every wrong place that it can go.
Including up the sides of mountains.
The Spanish Explorers thought they were delicious roasted over a campfire. Lots and lots of marbled meat.
ReplyDeleteI have heard that about sailors mistaking them for mermaids too Og, but having been around Manatees, I just can't figure it out. They are interesting creatures (for a little while, then they get boring because they don't DO anything), but not attractive in any human sence that I understand. I'll have to ask a friend of mine that is a certified chubby chaser and see if he see's it. Or does anyone know... Does scurvey include symptoms of delusions or excessively odd sexual arrousal?
ReplyDeletes
"Does scurvey include symptoms of delusions or excessively odd sexual arrousal?"
ReplyDeleteOr maybe that whole brain eating amoeba thing goes back a lot further than we thought.
Horndogs have been horndogs since the beginning of time. Even monkeys engage in interspecis stuff.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khwjD-KVQ_Q
Don't click on that link. Really, don't.
As long as you don't get turned on by a hyrax . . . they have teeth!
ReplyDelete:-)
John Stephens,
ReplyDelete"Or maybe that whole brain eating amoeba thing goes back a lot further than we thought."
Could I borrow some of those brain-eating amoebas? I need a bit of a forebrain shampoo at the moment.
I TOLD you not to click on the link.
ReplyDelete"then they get boring because they don't DO anything"
ReplyDeleteWell, if you snorkle/dive with them, they'll come up to you, and you can scratch them, and they'll remember and come back for more later. Kind of like dorcile(should that be dorsal in this case?) dogs. ;)
Then again some seals will do that too, and are a lot more active and fun to watch, but live in colder water...
Manatees are perhaps the ugliest and the dumbest (per pound anyway) sea mammal in existence.
ReplyDeleteTake a ride in a slow-moving power boat and the dolphins will come out to play in your wake. The manatees will get hit by your prop. You couldn't hit a dolphin if you tried... the manatees... it isn't just that they are slow-moving, they are too stupid to get out of the way. (Darwin probably has something to say about that.)
"(Darwin probably has something to say about that.)"
ReplyDeleteHe'd say that they survived just fine for millions of years before powerboats were invented.
Sounds like Walpurgis Nacht ( Night of the Walrus ).
ReplyDeleteCleaning the tusk marks out of the back yard the next day is a pain.
I used to belong to a sportfishing club in Ft. Lauderdale, and we had one of the state's manatee experts come talk to us about them. He said the real threat wasn't small powerboats but the big ships that come into port down there. An outboard will cut them, sure, but a big tug will cut them in half.
ReplyDeleteThe other big problem was that Caribbean islanders knew they taste great. There's a lot of islanders in south Florida - and there's a lot of manatee rustling.
As a diver, I got to swim with them at Crystal River, Fla. Even once with my kids.
ReplyDeleteA great experience! Advise: go on a weekday morning at sunrise and, you will see them. Go on a weekend or mid day and you will not see anything for the silted water.
That was a good one! :-)
ReplyDeleteI do not think that word means what you think it means.
ReplyDelete>but having been around Manatees, I just can't figure it out
ReplyDeleteHaving been around sailors, I can.
Great, now California's likely to ban those hitch covers with the propellers, to protect their nesting grounds.
ReplyDelete"Table Mountain" to me is a mesa not far west of Denver. Was wondering how manatees got up there ... and why?
ReplyDeleteThen I had to follow the link...
Q