Thursday, February 27, 2014

Lemon Lips and JoJo

Hi All,
I'm always hoping to see the calves that have gotten older and left their moms. Lemon Lips was one of my very favorite calves. I called him that because his lips always had a yellow tinge. My second book has lots of encounters with him and his mom, Bo. A few days ago when I watched JoJo, Raggedy Ann and two male dolphins, I thought the smaller male might be Lemon Lips. Now I'm sure.
We found JoJo leaping out of the wake of Kenard's huge motor catamaran. JoJo decided to switch over to our wake. His ultimate goal was to catch a ride to the channel between Fort George and Dellis Cay. When we got there he branched off and started to swim slowly around. We were wondering what would happen next - sleep mode? fish? meet another dolphin?
I decided to see if he wanted company and as I was getting in I noticed another dorsal heading his way. The water was very murky.  I could barely see a foot ahead of me under water so I kept looking up to see where the dorsal's were heading. The new comer was closer to me so, I went in his direction. When I got there I recognized his fluke from the past day. He was the smaller of the sexually aroused dolphins. He had two slight notches out of the right  side of his fluke. He let me come up right beside him as he traveled along to greet JoJo. Clearly JoJo had come to this area to meet him. It was very murky and hard to see what was going on but I could see they were happy to greet each other. As they traveled to a slightly less murky area, I could make out more activity. I think JoJo was giving him some sex education as there was a lot of stroking and showing of male parts. I ended up right in the middle of it all quite a few times but they didn't seem to mind. It's all very natural to them, it's just our society that gets uncomfortable with that behavior. Later, Julia and Frisky showed up but decided to leave the boys and go fishing. Lemon Lips and I got a lot of time to play. He always liked it when I made little tight circles above him. It was quite shallow where we were and I started circling and he circled right below me. JoJo clearly wanted me to hang with him and left us for a while. When JoJo wants me to go to another dolphin he leads me to them then hangs there waiting for me to go to them. Unfortunately a tour boat came and put  swimmers in the water. JoJo and Lemon Lips moved away just out of their reach. I had to wait until they left to resume my fun. JoJo was following me around but Lemon Lips was still way off in the distance. Eventually they came together and started back toward Leeward. I really think that meeting has made me happier than all the others. I love Lemon Lips and wasn't sure I'd see him again. Not only did I see him but, he remembered me and our games.
I have mentioned Flipper Footsie as an affection thing dolphins do and I found a clip from a day that shows it. Its at the very end of the clip. It's a bit murky and JoJo comes right in from of me but if you look carefully you'll see two dolphins playing flipper footsie. They are Lemon Lips and Raggedy Ann.

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