| A couple of years ago I was out fishing in my kayak in Mosquito Lagoon on the Florida space coast. I was paddling along and saw some manatees about 50 yards to my right. All of a sudden a manatee came up behind me and catapulted me forward. My friend was watching and he said the wake and explosion it threw up was the size of the of a volkswagon. I remember just paddling as hard as I could and looking back and seeing his head right behind the kayak. It was amazing how fast I was going due to how hard I was paddling and the force of how hard he pushed me. I didn't stop paddling until I was safe in about 6 inches of water.
I have heard other stories like this about manatees. I know people say they are very slow and docile creatures but I know for a fact that isn't all true.
Here's another story:
We were out fishing in a canoe in the same area. We were about 50 feet off the bank. We heard a lot of crazy noise for a couple of minutes and it got closer and louder. All of a sudden this huge wild boar comes running out of the woods to the edge of the water about 40 yards from us. He was being chased by about 8 hunting dogs. The dogs surrounded him and then all of a sudden a big ass pitbull came charging out and went right at the boar. We paddled our asses about 100 yards away to stay out of harms way and then watched as they went at it. (Oh my god, I am sounding like Michael Vick right now). This went on for about 20 minutes before about a half dozen rednecks came out of the woods and ended up shooting the hog.
This was one of the craziest things I have ever seen and it scared the hell out of me when it first happened because we were so close to it. Needless to say after these 2 incidents I ended up selling my canoe and kayak and took up golf. There is too much crazy sh!t that goes on out there to be paddling around in a little canoe or kayak. |