A Mermaid’s Tail

As I was reading the paper a story about a mermaid caught my eye and reminded me of the time we stopped in Weeki Wachee with some grand kids to cool off in the springs and see some mermaids. This was way back when they were still young enough to believe or at least politely consider that there might be real mermaids even though they gave us skeptical looks until they saw them with their own eyes.

Well recently, an aspiring mermaid has been banned from her community pool, I read in the newspaper, all this because they have a no swim fin policy. I will concede that a mermaid’s tail may be a bit more than just swim fins; the tail in question is custom made of blue silicon. Ms. Conti (the mermaid in the news article) calls herself Eden Sirene when she dons her mermaid persona and though she was not pictured in the newspaper article the adjacent column contained a photo of several other female 400 to 775 pound members of the order sirenia (manatees) being returned to their natural habitat by the SeaWorld Animal Rescue team, just an interesting co-inky dink, I think. Eden Sirene does dream of swimming in the Florida Aquarium, and I hope she gets to fulfill that dream someday.

So I called the pool here in St. Marys to find out whether or not they had a policy preventing the use of swim fins and the good news I found out is that they do not. I guess this blog is my personal siren call to all aspiring mermaids and Eden Sirene. Come on down to Georgia, the water’s fine!