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Oct 9, 2009 11:17 am US/Eastern
Beach Re-Opens After Manatees Use It For Toilet
VERO BEACH (CBS4) ―
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A pod of manatees comes very close to shore off Fort Lauderdale beach on June 19th, 2009. They did not leave droppings behind.
Stacy George/CBS Viewer
Most people who think about Manatees think about their grace, their size, or the fact they are a fragile part of a slowly disappearing Florida habitat. Few consider where the manatee goes to answer nature's call, but now we know; a beach in Indian River County was closed when it was found to be covered with used manatee food, or to be blunt, manatee poop.
And not just a small amount. A one mile stretch of Humiston Park Beach was closed when it was found to be covered in the stuff. Piles of it.
At first, county officials thought it might be human waste, possibly from a broken sewer line. But upon closer inspection (and you wonder how that task was assigned) it was decided the waste wasn't human.
State wildlife officials identified the source. It's what's left over after a manatee has a good meal, and they eat about a hundred pounds of sea grass a day. That's a lot of sea cow piles. It's not known how the wildlife experts knew, but nobody was asking.
Once the "what" was decided, the next question to answer was "how". While the manatee is a mammal and breathes air, they are not known to leave the water to take care of other business. So, that leaves the question; how did mass quantities of manatee muffins end up on the beach?
The truth is, nobody knows for sure. There's talk of migrating manatees, lots of them, traveling along the coast and leaving their droppings on the ocean floor, where recent high winds may have carried it to shore and dropped it among the sunbathers.
That's one thought. Maybe the manatees were so tired of people sending their waste into the ocean they decided to return the favor.
If that's the case, the sea cows are not talking.
The beach has re-opened, after cleanup crews buried the manatee leavings deep under the sand.
And that's the straight poop.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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