Florida Living by Amelia

We arrived in Florida late at night, weary from more than 22 hours of driving. While stopping for gas, each rest break was warmer, further south. Florida was no different. Once we finally got into the state, we could tell that January 2021 would be a warm one. To be honest, the Airbnb we rented was... kind of trashed with weird gross junk everywhere, but my favorite part, the sun room was perfectly fine. From there you could see all sorts of sea birds diving and sweeping about. There were courmorants and seagulls and cranes and herons and plenty of others. Grey mossy strands hung from the majestic limbs of some of the older trees in the area. Palms stood out against the horizon, where you could see the canals flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, with houses standing against them, including ours. We were left a 2 person kayak and canoe to paddle to a beach and explore the canals. We went to many beaches and even went to a wildlife reserve during our stay. Once while Dad was working, we went to look for the spring that fueled our canal, making the water warm and refreshing. We finally found it, and swam around inside, when suddenly, Mom shrieked. She had spotted something like a rock in a place we were positive there hadn't been one before. It submerged itself underwater and we decided to look for more. After sever minutes of patient waiting and chasing bubbles, we saw the gray- brown of another creature. Making our boat glide in the right direction, we lifted our paddles, so as to not scare whatever it was away. It surfaced higher. We held our breath. Our boat hit the animal. We had mispredicted the boat's glide, making it go too far. We were positive the creature would send us toppling into the water, flipping the canoe. It wasn't so. The huge creature adjusted so we could see it's face. It was a manatee! Gliding slowly away, I got a good look at the animal. It was breath-takingly huge, bigger than our canoe. I had always pictured manatees as about the size of a large sea lion. It was much bigger. Awed by the size of the gentle giant, I decided that this was what sea dinosaurs looked like. It's leathery skin was hardened and crack
ed, looking much like a weathered rock. It swam away towards the Gulf. Soon later Madeleine had another manatee's snout pop up by her kayak, making a breathing sound, but about 20 times more loud and groteque. We paddled away, silenced by the exited blabber of our own thoughts about what had happened. We had seen manatees. Suddenly, the grossness of our rental house seemed less annoying. We had seen such cool stuff and were about to experience more, that small, dirty houses didn't matter that much. Anything that could show me such cool Floridan wildlife was fine by me.

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