Reflexively, Booger glanced upward at the approaching growl of the Donzi. Fifteen feet above him, haplessly flailing into the boat's path, was a man in a business suit. One of his hands clutched something round and mossy-looking, though it definitely wasn't a head of lettuce.
The Booger of forty-eight hours before the febrile, erratic Booger with Flipperian fantasies might have been reminded of poor old Marion, might have shot upward to rescue this wallowing specimen from the deadly propellers that had claimed so many of Booger 's dearest manatee companions.
But the new Booger knew better. The notion of playing hero never entered his unconvoluted brain, which at the moment was singularly focused on procreation. Thirteen hundred pounds of saucy sea cow nooky had paddled into Booger's life, and he was serene beyond distraction.
So he dismissed the human commotion on the surface of the bay; lowered his shoe button eyes and swam onward, nudging and nuzzling his slippery new mate. Booger might have flinched slightly at the familiar thud of the impact above, the sickening whine of cavitating props, but he didn't look up a second time.
Every mammal for himself.