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| Would you mistaken this creature as a mermaid? |
Somewhere along the line in both of our lives, someone told
us that the myth about mermaids may have originated when sunstruck sailors saw manatees
swimming near their vessels. After
observing enormous manatees lumbering through shallow water at the Homosassa
Springs Wildlife State Park and after meeting pretend mermaids at Weeki Wachi State
Park, we think that you would have to be pretty badly sunstruck to imagine a
manatee as a beautiful half woman, half fish.
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| Their backs look a little like rocks |
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| Yummy romaine lettuce lunch |
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| 2 manatees viewed from an underwater viewing area |
Manatees weigh over a thousand pounds, their nearest
relative is the elephant. They have a
somewhat elongated prehensile nose that they use to grab grasses off of the
bottom of the springs, rivers and ocean shoreline. They eat 100 pounds of greenery a day, so they
need to stay in shallow areas where they can graze. Even though they are huge, they don’t have
any body fat, so they migrate to warmer waters to stay comfortable; 75 degree
springs in the winter and 80+ degree Gulf of Mexico in the summer. They move slowly, gently undulating their
tails and walking along the bottom using their front flippers. Manatees are mammals and need to come to the
surface to breathe, even when they sleep.
In spite of the fact that they can’t be mistaken for mermaids, they are
fascinating animals. We spent a good
part of a previous trip to Florida unsuccessfully looking for manatees, and were happy
to finally see them.
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| Burrowing Owl |
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| Flamingos |
Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park was once a roadside zoo,
that got taken over by Florida State Parks in the 1990s. With one exception, they relocated the exotic
animals, and populated the park with animals native to Florida. The animals that we saw (manatees, bears,
panthers, deer, and more) were either born in captivity, orphaned in the wild, or badly injured
in the wild so that they would not be able to survive on their own. They were brought to the park to teach
us about the wildlife that we may or may not see outside of the park. There is a large outdoor water bird area, and
it seems that some of the birds have just decided to move in there on their own. There are colorful flamingos there, which are rarely
found in the wild anymore, but which used to be found in South Florida.
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| Homosassa River just outside the Park, humans like the cool water on a hot day |
The park is located around Homosassa Springs, and the
manatee area is in the Springs themselves.
During the winter, the resident manatees are put in a holding area in
part of the basin, and a barrier is lifted allowing wild manatees to come into
the Springs to warm themselves. The wild animals
are not fed and can come and go as they please.
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| Lu the Hippopotomus |
The one exception is a 67 year old hippopotamus named
Lu. He was born in captivity and used in
movies, residing at the roadside zoo between gigs. As he got older, he became more reluctant to
act, so he retired here. He became a
favorite with the locals, who petitioned the state governor to let him stay in
the park when it transitioned over to being exclusively Florida wildlife. He
was granted Florida citizenship and was allowed to remain (as the only Florida hippo). Hippos generally only live to be 60 in the
wild, so Lu seems to be doing pretty well.
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| Weeki Wachee mermaids as seen from the underwater ampitheater |
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| Acrobatic mermaids |
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| Ariel and her prince |
Several days later we traveled to another former roadside
attraction, turned state park, Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. Since the 1940s, pretty girls with (or
without) mermaid tails have done synchronized ballet moves, smiled, danced, lip
synced to songs, eaten bananas and drunk soda (non-carbonated) six feet under
water while catching breaths of air from hoses laying on the bottom of a stage
set at the edge of a very deep Class 1 Spring
that gushes out huge quantities of water (150 million gallons each day). You view the show from an underwater amphitheater
with music piped in. These young women
(and a few men) are marvelous athletes, and the tricks they did (twirling and
swirling and making a rotating wheel of 3 mermaids) were pretty
astonishing. We saw them perform a
version of the folk tale (wait for it…) The Little Mermaid. Prior to the show you are greeted by dry merfolk
in matching aloha shirts or dresses. We
didn’t realize who they were (even though their pictures were on the wall)
until later in our visit. If you go to
Weeki Wachee (which you really should do) and if you want to meet a mermaid in
person, this is the time to do it.
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| Where you can swim in Weeki Wachee Springs |
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| A mermaid entering the water during a show |
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| Russ practicing his mer-moves |
Also, at the state park you can take a 25 minute boat tour
of the Weeki Wachee River. There was
an animal show where a naturalist introduced us to a snake, a turtle, a
tortoise and a baby alligator. You can
also swim in Buchaneer Bay, a built up swim area in a part of the Springs adjacent
to where the mermaids perform. We
watched the merfolk dive in from a platform on the surface for another show. The Springs are 74.5 degrees warm, and so
were very refreshing on a hot Florida summer day.
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| The Weeki Wachee theater |
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| What fun we had! |
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