We need to save the manatee by breeding them down to a variety about 3’ long, so every celebrity can have a manatee pond.
I like how they picked one without the livid corpse-white scars of propeller gashes. Though, I must admit that having the nagging feeling that my choice of calming example is a special case in a world of the maimed and the dying does reduce its efficacy a bit…
Manatees are always relaxing, but do you know what works just as well? Jellyfish. The Newport Aquarium in Cincinnati seems to have changed, but when I was there a few years ago they had an amazing design. One large room was an otter exhibit. The plastic rocks and plexiglass walls created a serious echo, and the otters, being active and playful, had everyone screaming and talking loudly.
The next room was the Jellyfish Gallery. Dark, quiet, and with maroon velvet seats and plush walls it was a sharp, and welcome, contrast to the otter room. Walking through you got wired, then relaxed just as quickly.
Of course keeping your own jellyfish can be pretty stressful, but the jellyfish lamp is a decent substitute.
Yes… I also associate manatees with something gentle and cow-eyed about to be chopped up by boat propellers. Calming FAIL.
… or maybe we’re all just neurotic. Probably both.
Petting jellyfish: also stressful.
They are spectacular at aquariums. Very relaxing. Not so much when they are floating in the ocean near you, though.
Shouldn’t they be even smaller so they can fit in water-purses of some sort, to be carried and displayed like accessory dogs?
In Galveston, Texas I was canoeing around a small bay and a jellyfish moved alongside my boat for a while. In the wild that’s as close as I wanted to get. On that same trip a Portuguese man-of-war washed up on the beach. Closer than I wanted to get. There were also dozens of moon jellyfish on the beach. I don’t know if that was a special event or if that part of Texas is just regularly cnidaria central. If it is, well…
Every time I’ve been to the beach in south Texas I have shared that beach with dozens of dead jellyfish. /anecdata
I love manatees ever since I learned about them in the third grade when they were in a Weekly Reader. Anyone else remember Weekly Reader? I still have my copy from the Challenger explosion.
Anything too small to give a bear hug would just be a mana-tease.
I grew up in Manatee County, Florida, and would have agreed up until the internet introduced me to water bears. (And I see I wasn’t the first to think of those.)
Awww, this is kinda morbid, what with nothing being ok for a manatee.
The Spice Must Flow
Don’t Manatees write “Family Guy”?
Georgeor … the deed is evident … you have lived well … to go is to return.
I really don’t need a hug. I need a Temple Grandin Hug Machine.
Gasp
They’ve released a trailer for Half-Life 3?
