M is for Mermaid….
Do you remember daydreaming about mermaids? For years, I always believed mermaids are an old sailor’s over-worked imagination. I’ll touch base on that late. During my research for today’s Alphabe-Thursday post, I discovered a real-life mermaid. Yeah, what’s she been smoking? you’re saying. Honestly, I found a modern-day mermaid.
Meet Hannah Fraser, a real-life mermaid. She can dive 50 feet beneath the surface of the ocean on one single breath before resurfacing. What’s truly cool about Hannah is her ability to co-exist with animals of the deep. Read the entire article HERE
While Hannah isn’t the mermaid from a bygone era of sailors’ beautiful sirens. Okay, beautiful, yeah, but not what long ago sailors saw. What did they see? You may know the answer to this $100,000 question already but, if not, then this is what they saw…the magnificent manatee!
Sailors spent months on end out on the ocean without the company of… the softer sex. One can only imagine where their thoughts were most of the time. The seaman spotted creatures submerged beneath the seas’ folds with a head, arms(flippers), and the back half a fish tail. Their imagination interpreted — half girl, half-fish. Wah-lah, the mermaid was born. In fact, Christopher Columbus even wrote about mermaids in his log on his voyage to the New World. Columbus reported that they “came quite high out of the water but were not as pretty as they are depicted…” (Cherry, 1995)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn’t go so far to say manatee are beautiful. Manatees are sometimes called sea cows. They are considered to be gentle and slow-moving animals. These large, gray plant-eating, aquatic mammals can grow to be 10 feet long, can weigh 800 –1,2000 pounds, and have a lifespan of 60 years. Most of their time spent eating, resting, and traveling. Not a bad kind of life, eh? Because they are mammals, then they must surface for air about every 3-5 minutes, but while they sleep they may remain submerged for as long as 20 minutes. Sadly because of over hunting, they were nearly extinct and are under the Endangered Species Act.
Lonely sailors and the sea’s romance fueled ocean voyagers’ imaginations creating mystifying stories for young and old alike for centuries about a lovely, enchanting creature. Disney’s 1989 popular animation The Little Mermaid reenacted these very childhood fantasies in all of us. (Free Little Mermaid coloring pages downloads) To live in the world of make-believe for even a short while is a nice escape from reality’s insanity.
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Wow. Isn’t she amazing? I never wanted to be a mermaid because I’m kinda/sorta afraid of deep water. And I think they would almost have a Celtic lilt to their lyrical voices. I’ve always had that in my head!
Thanks for a magnificent M post. You should look in my side bar for ImagiMeri’s blog…she put up a bunch of cool mermaid clipart a few days ago!
Thanks for the fascinating stop.
A+
Interesting information.
Hannah Fraser is one strong, brave woman.
Mermaid…maybe for some…but for me, I like being a sexy, handsome man! 🙂
My entry is here:
This is very interesting.
yes as a child. I dreamt about being a mermaid and being captured by a mermaid family.
2. I thought they’d sound like waves with music. I’m not sure I can explain it, but that if they speak, you’d understand but it would normally sound like a song on the waves 🙂
Aloha!
I’ve always been intrigue by mermaids and whether they really existed. though I never actually want to be one.
nice M post.
Ok. I love the Manatee’s but I still choose to believe in Mermaids!
I always thought mermaids sang their siren song accompanied by a golden harp.
Manatees may not be the most beautiful creatures, but they sure are fascinating.
One tale of mermaids that comes to mind is SC Lewis’s stories of Narnia.
What an interesting post. Thank you for sharing your ‘M’!
She sure has great lungs, doesn’t she?
I never wanted to be a mermaid, because the tail thing would have driven me crazy! Haha! You know, I’ve never thought about how they would sound until now. I would guess it to sound as you said, like a whale.
What a wonderful post! I think mermaids are shown as being so elegant!
Oh wow….that was really interesting.
@Ames That’s kinda cute, but I know it was scary, too. How old were you?
@40b4ab101503ca8b8d959d2e37d6abad You crack me up! Of all things to worry about, you picked going to the bathroom. Just because you don’t see, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way. =D
I eat like a mermaid, but I don’t want to be a mermaid. It sounds like a lot of fun to pretend play. I wouldn’t mind that at all 😉
See there are somethings about being a mermaid that I am not sure about, like the way they sound, how they go to the bathroom…you know? Well, all the images show them with tails and no “release way.” lol.
I lived in Ft. Lauderdale for many years and took my kids to see (and feed) manatees all the time. They aren’t the most beautiful creatures out there, but they are some of the most gentle….
Got to admit I never thought much about mermaids – that tail doesn’t do much for me. But your post was fascinating.
Hannah Fraser is a brave and amazing woman.
i had childhood fantasies but being a mermaid was not one of them. i grew up in a house where story telling was a nightly entertainment (we had no TV), most of the stories were made-up but there were no mermaids.:p fairies, monsters, gunslingers, princes, various mythical creatures but no mermaids.
i always imagined mermaids as beautiful, young women with violin and angelic voices.
I remember the first time I saw a manatee. I ran crying the whole way back to my grandmother’s trailer, she lived by the river where I saw the manatee. Scared me to death!~Ames
Fascinating post! And what an amazing woman!!
=)