A Surprise Manatee Sighting

There have been a lot of commercials on local television promoting Manatee Lagoon, which educates the public about endangered manatees and is located in West Palm Beach, Florida, and so I decided to look at their web site to see if I wanted to visit it. That website stated that manatee season is from November 15th through March 31st, and so I decided to put off a visit until the fall. And so, when I was wandering around the Fort Pierce Marina yesterday afternoon, I was surprised to hear a woman shout out that there was a manatee (who no doubt didn't get the memo) in the water next to a cabin cruiser. Of course, I sprang into action and tried to take a photo of it, but by the time I got to the railing I could only see it's backside as it swam away, as seen in the lower left of the photograph on the left.

That manatee was headed in the direction of the Fort Pierce Manatee Observation Center across the harbor, and so I hopped in the car and drove over there, hoping I might spot it again. But no such luck. The only wildlife I saw was the heron in the photograph on the right, which was definitely entertaining that young child, but for me - not so much. Still another lost opportunity to photograph giant creatures in the wild.

As I was walking back to the car, I noticed that there was something called the Seven Gables House Visitor Center right across the parking lot, not to be confused with the House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts, made famous in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel of the same name. I read the informational sign about the place, and learned that it was built in 1905, and in 1943 became a brothel, which was very popular with the servicemen stationed in Fort Pierce back then. It was restored and moved to the waterfront, where the Chamber of Commerce uses it to promote various attractions in the area. A strange choice to represent the city, but Fort Pierce is a port town after all, and it is Florida, and so I guess it makes sense in a warped kind of way. Kind of like Florida itself.