THE ONE THAT EATS GRASS IN THE SEA

The Manatee.
“The old mother manatee held him close to her.” Page 19.

Down among the lily-leaves, under the river, the baby manatee was being rocked to sleep on his mother’s breast. He looked like a roly-poly fish, with a puffy dog-face. He was covered all over from his broad tail to his round head with thick and wrinkly gray skin. His tiny eyes were shut, and his flippers were folded together as he slept.

The old mother manatee held him close to her, bending her short flippers, which were really her arms. The fingers at the ends of her hands were so hidden under the skin that they looked as if covered with mittens. She was balancing herself on the end of her tail, and swaying gently to and fro in the water.

The baby’s nap did not last very long. One of the annoying things about being a manatee and living under water was the trouble in breathing. Every two or three minutes the mother flapped her tail and rose to the top of the river to breathe. That always woke the baby. He opened his eyes, blinking in the bright sunlight.

All around him the water sparkled and dimpled in the sunshine. Here and there dragon-flies glittered as they skimmed over the ripples. Butterflies were fluttering over the golden centres of the floating lilies. Graceful reeds bordered the shore. The juicy grass, that manatees love to eat, grew green, trailing underneath. Far up above it all the summer sky was blue.

The baby manatee did not seem to care for all these beautiful sights. Very likely he could not see well above water, and he did not enjoy the dry, warm feeling of the air. His sense of smell must have been too dull to notice the fragrance of the lilies or the spicy scent from the swamp. Creatures living under water do not use their noses much.

But the little manatee could hear the least soft plop of a leaf falling in the river. The sudden splash of a frog’s jump made him squirm and twist in terror. He wriggled out of his mother’s hold, and sank down, down, down, with the bubbles eddying over his roly-poly body.

Of course he was not afraid, for he could swim as soon as he was born. He paddled with his tail and flapped with his flippers as he went swimming around over the clean white sand of the river-bottom. At first he could not steer very well, and so he bumped into the stems of the lily-plants and tangled his flippers among the roots of the reeds.

Through the pale green of the water all around him he caught sight of his father and big brother. They were creeping about on their flippers and tails, while they munched the weeds and grasses. When they stretched out their heads, toward a bite of something, each one grasped the food between two horny pads in the front of his jaw, tore it free, and then chewed it with his few grinding teeth in the back. Their faces looked like monstrous caterpillars sucking and chewing.

The baby champed his small jaws and sucked with his split upper lip as he watched. The sight of them eating made him so hungry that he wanted his mother to come and feed him with her milk. Manatees are mammals that live in shallow water. Of all the animals in the sea and salt rivers manatees are the only ones that eat only grass and weeds. All other sea-mammals, and fishes, too, eat living creatures.

Sometimes the baby manatee had great fun in rolling over and over on the sand and pebbles at the bottom of the river. The old ones liked to scratch and clean their wrinkled skins by plunging and scraping over the gravel. It was easy enough for them to roll, because they were so round and had no legs to get in the way.

After the tumbling he followed the others as they went paddling to the top of the river. There he twitched apart his lip-lobes and blew, spouting up spray and water. Then, drawing in a long breath, he closed the stoppers in his nostrils and floated down to the sandy bottom to sleep or eat again.

All summer the manatees lived there in the pleasant river. On misty mornings sometimes they swam up to a mud flat, and crawled out to take a nap in the soft warm slime. Out in the air they could sleep and breathe at the same time, without waking up every few minutes. When the baby was tired of staying still he slid down the slippery bank—splash!—into the water.

His splashing sent a snake wriggling away through the swamp. The crabs on the sand below went scuttling wildly hither and thither to escape the flapping of his tail. Fishes darted out-stream, and mussels closed their shells to keep out the stirred-up gravel. The frogs sitting in the mud turned their round eyes to look at the funny little fellow with the wrinkled dark skin.

Away he paddled to the bottom and tried to munch the water-grasses. His few teeth were cutting through his gums by this time, and he was hungry for something besides milk. The green leaves tasted so salty and stringy that he did not like them at first. It was easier to suck warm, rich milk, without needing to chew and chew till his jaws really ached.

One night the manatees lay down on the clean sand, folded their flippers under them, and closed their eyes. They fell fast asleep. Now one and now another woke to swim to the top for a good long breath. About mid-night the old mother suddenly felt a chill stealing through the water. She shivered all over, and hurried to wake the others. She knew that cold weather had come. If they did not take care they would all catch cold and die.

So away they started, as fast as they could paddle, down the river to the sea. Then south along the shore they travelled to find warmer waters. They kept so near land that they could hear the waves breaking on the beach. The ocean washed to and fro in swinging billows over their heads. When the baby lifted his head above the surface, bits of foam blew in his eyes from the curling crests of the waves.

Down below, where the old ones stopped to munch the seaweeds, he saw wonderful things. There were starfish crawling along with their five rays spread out. There were transparent jellyfishes, with long threads streaming down from their quivering bodies. There were mussels in their hinged shells lying on the bottom. There were sponges growing on the rocks. There were trees of branching coral, each tiny coral animal waving the fringe around its open mouth.

Of course there were fishes—hundreds and hundreds of them—flashing everywhere. Once a fat porpoise came rolling and tumbling through the shallow water. He was a mammal, and belonged to the same group as the whales. When he was a baby he fed on milk, just in the same way as the little manatee and all other mammals.

On and on travelled the manatees toward the warm south seas, now swimming on swiftly, now stopping to munch the weeds. Sometimes they stood on the tips of their tails and nodded their heads as if bowing. Sometimes they folded their flippers under them to sleep, then woke to breathe, and fall asleep again.

After days and days they reached the southern river, where they were to spend the winter. There they found another family of manatees with a little one just the size of the baby. While the old ones munched the weeds, or dozed on the mud islands, the two youngest slid down the slippery banks and splashed and dived together. They took naps side by side. Sometimes they tried to balance themselves on their tails, as the old ones did.

This southern river was different from that one at home. The plants had broader leaves and larger flowers. The swamp was tangled and shadowy even at noonday. Strange animals tramped through the underbrush; monkeys swung on the branches, and brightly-colored birds flew overhead. Hairy spiders crawled over the ground, and big snakes wriggled into the water.

When spring came, away the manatees swam on their way back to the pleasant river, where the baby first opened his little eyes in the cool green nursery among the lily-leaves. Of course he never knew that some sailors once saw his mother rocking him to sleep at the top of the water. They thought that she was a mermaid with a baby in her arms.