Remember how we tried to lure audience members to our 11:45pm Sunday night show with the promise of pimiento cheese, shark teeth, and manatee-saving? Well, the pimiento cheese didn’t work out (but that’s a whole other post), the shark teeth were surprisingly popular, and the manatee-saving is about to begin!

We just got our disbursement checks, and we clearly are not rolling in dough. But, hey, if I were doing this to get rich, well, that would be pretty stupid of me. But we did break double-digit dollar amounts, so yay! Unfortunately, our first payment (including Friday, Saturday, and that Sunday night show) wasn’t broken down by day, so I don’t know exactly how much I earned on Sunday night. But I figured I’ll just divide the first check by three — that gives us $100 raised for manatees!

It’s enough money for us to adopt a manatee from the Save the Manatee Club, plus send the rest as a donation to their Emergency Rescue Fund (which will deal with manatees impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf).

That manatee is so excited he’s doing backflips!

Speaking of excited, did you know that you can buy a Manatee Merlot? Or manatee-inspired coffee? All of this can be found on the Save the Manatee Club’s website. Not sure what exactly inspires a manatee coffee… sea grass? Also, I noticed that manatees are very flatulent and tend to have a vigorous excretory system. Please insert your own coffee-related joke here. Eww.

So once our donation is submitted and our adoption process is complete, I’ll post it all on here for your enjoyment. Until then, don’t spend any time thinking about what we should name our new bundle of joy. You know our mascot is going to be called Fat Tom!

This manatee is so grateful that he’s coming in close for a big, wet, hairy smooch. Pucker up!

All manatees in this post were photographed by me and live at SeaWorld Orlando and were rescued from the wild after suffering injuries. SeaWorld is actually very fun and not too crowded and doesn’t seem overly exploitive of its animals. Also, they have great deals for FL residents if you purchase tickets online.