A Pet's View / May 2006
Manatees for Mom
Moms, wives, grandmothers and best friends everywhere will be honored this Mother’s Day with deserving gifts of gratitude. An unusual, memorable gift that fits every size but requires no closet space is to make her an adoptive parent of an endangered Florida manatee.
For $25, any mother can become a manatee mama in absentia from the nonprofit organization, Save the Manatee Club, and receive an adoption certificate, photo, biography, membership handbook, and a subscription to Save the Manatee Club’s newsletter, The Manatee Zone.
For $35, each new member who joins or is entered in the Adopt-A-Manatee program online will also receive a Mana-T-shirt, while supplies last.
To help commemorate Save the Manatee Club’s 25th Anniversary, participants can also enter a first-time ever donation drawing and have a real baby manatee named after their mother. If the entry is drawn, she gets to name one of the baby manatees born at Blue Spring State Park during the 2006/2007 winter season. Funds raised will go toward Club programs to protect manatees and their habitat, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Blue Spring’s manatee protection efforts. Find out more on the Club’s website at: http://www.savethemanatee.org/namesake_drawing_form.cfm.
For Mother’s Day, choose from twenty manatees for Mom in the Club’s Blue Spring adoption program. Generations of these gigantic but gentle, aquatic mammals are tracked and recorded by the park’s manatee specialist. For instance, adoptees Lenny and Lucille are brother and sister and both regularly visit the warm spring waters at the park during the cooler winter months. Lucille has given birth to numerous calves over the years, and is now a great grandmother. She’s easy to identify by her damaged right flipper, an injury caused by monofilament line when she lost the lower half of her flipper where the line had been entangled. Though Lenny likes to lead a quiet life, he has also led a rough life, suffering a number of boat hits and acquiring distinctive scars, particularly on his tail.
Only about 3,000 manatees remain in the United States today. They are listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Funds from the Club’s three adoption programs go toward education and conservation efforts.
For more information on adopting a manatee for Mother’s Day and the donation drawing to name the baby, contact Save the Manatee Club at 500 N. Maitland Ave., Maitland, FL 32751, call 1-800-432-JOIN (5646), or visit www.savethemanatee.org.
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Femme Fair 2006
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