This is Deputy Digby Pancake.  If there was ever a time that I was confused, well, it would be that time.  Yet, since I can’t tell time, I will tell you that it is always pancake o’clock.  And if you are in that Florida place, and you are looking for butter for your pancakes at pancake o’clock, well, you are out of luck.  If you ask a sea cow.

I will tell you.  There are many times where butter may be optional.  There may be many times when butter is an afterthought, you know, like when you have cornbread. Or a biscuit.  Or toast.  Toast and jam.  Not toast and butter.  That is not what the song says.

But pancakes.  Pancakes must have syrup.  And pancakes must have butter.  And I know where butter comes from.  I know that cows make milk, and milk makes butter.  So when we headed to a place in Florida yesterday that had a bunch of sea cows, I knew to bring my pancakes along in Girl Person’s backpack. I was ready!

I knew that butter would be everywhere.  In fact, I rightly imagined that even the water would be made of butter and syrup together, all melted from the Florida heat.

But I rightly imagined wrongly. Dern. Sea cows.

Now, I know cows.  I am well traveled, and I have heard cows moo in Texas.  I have heard cows moo in Oklahoma.  I have heard cows moo in Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. I have heard cows moo in California.  Should I go on?

A cow is a cow.  But apparently in that Florida place, sea cows don’t moo even though they move so slow that they would have plenty of time for that.  They don’t run across green fields of grass, but they eat seaweed.  And instead of butter?  They have no. Butter.  No. Butter.  Y’all.

Girl Person says that if they prefer to put no butter on their pancakes, that is their decision.  Well, I am not one to tell someone how to eat their pancakes, but I am.

However, as I stood near a giant sea cow that had somehow made its way out of the sea onto a Florida roadside attraction, I thought about it a minute.  It was pancake o’clock, after all.

Here I was, all worried that the sea cows had no butter.  But since butter is a must on pancakes, that just meant that no one around here could partake in a stack..because there was no butter…which left more for me.  I could get. All. The. Pancakes.  And then, the sea cows could do what they do best.  Churn their fake butter for cornbread.  Cause no one needs to put that on pancakes.

Girl Person says that sea cows may have no butter, but that they are beautiful.  She says that they may not have time to make real butter because they have to steer clear of speeding boats and persons that don’t care about sea cows. She says that all manatees usually have scars where boats have hit them, and if persons don’t slow down, there won’t be any left.  And that my friends is a shame.  Even if they don’t make butter.

So as we left the sea cows to come back to the Big Blue Treat Wagon, I may have brought my pancakes back home without butter.  But I also brought back some new friends in my heart.  You see, we all are like the sea cows a little bit.  We have a lot of things that can harm us during the day.  But if we slow down and go with the current, we will see more.  We will be more…of ourselves. Others will always expect something out of us that we are not, like I expected the sea cows to have butter.  But we are who we are…each one of us.  Go a little slower to churn up the real you.  But you’ll have to bring your own butter. There ain’t none around here.

-Deputy Digby Pancake (with butter)

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