Yesterday it was confirmed that 2012 was indeed the hottest year on record in the Lower 48, and yes maybe global warming may mean doom and gloom for the future of humanity.

But don't worry. There's a cute side to the story. Thanks to a warmer winter, fewer manatees died in Florida waters this year than in the past few years.

Clearly, manatees shall inherit the Earth. Accept them as our new overlords now.

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Does slogging around a foreboding, swampy wilderness searching for man-hungry pythons that can grow longer than a city block sound like your idea of a fun weekend? For hundreds of people from around the country, the answer is a resounding yes.

More than 400 souls who have apparently never seen cinematic masterpiece "Anaconda" have already signed up for Florida's 2013 Python Challenge. Starting on Saturday, they'll compete for $1,000 for slaying the biggest invasive snake.

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Manatees across the waters of Florida can breath a sign of relief. The woman who was caught on camera hitching a ride on back of an endangered sea mammal has turned herself in.

Ana Gloria Garcia Gutierrez says that she was new to the area and didn't think there was anything wrong with riding a manatee.

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An unidentified woman was seen hitching a ride on the back of a manatee in the waters off Fort De Soto Park in the Tampa Bay area, which runs afoul of the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act.

Now authorities are looking for the manatee molester.

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If you see a large group of manatees suddenly show up in shallow water and start rubbing up against each other, there's a good chance they're humping, and you shouldn't try to interrupt them.

Recently, such a group has appeared near Siesta Beach on Siesta Key, and wildlife officials have had to remind people not to jump in the water to play with the mating manatees.

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Save a manatee: slow down your boat

Somewhere in Biscayne Bay there is a pod of manatees laughing their fat, mossy asses off.

Aristides Lorenzo Rodriguez, 43, was sentenced to a year of probation yesterday for repeatedly violating speed limits in a manatee zone. Clearly, a federal judge Jonathan Goodman is trying to scare Rodriguez into giving a shit about the lovable sea cows. Rodriguez has been caught speeding through manatee zones eight times in the past 15 years. When he was pulled over by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officers near Virginia Key in October, he paid such little notice that he was pulled over again 15 minutes later for the same offense.

But in a rare act of aquatic karma, Goodman sentenced Rodriguez to 100 hours of community service -- with an organization that protects manatees.

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Photo by Kit Curtin

A manatee with a strikingly well designed piece of canal garbage. (Not a posed photo, Curtin says.)

​In a murky, garbage-strewn canal next to a dilapidated apartment complex, a mossy-colored beast breaks the water's surface. The manatee looks as out of place in this hood as a three-piece-suit-clad banker chillin' at Churchill's.

Kit Curtin, a veteran biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says it ain't easy being a manatee in the big city, but there are hundreds in the waterways. "This might be the only place in Miami where manatees can sleep in peace," she says. Now the manatees face a new threat: the loss of Curtin, whose federal grants have evaporated in the recession.

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​Members of Florida Tea Party groups are so upset with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's efforts to save manatees that they are claiming that new rules to possibly be imposed in famous Kings Bay would not only go against the Bible, but also are part of a vast United Nations conspiracy that seeks to limit the rights of Americans.

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​The great alien python menace continues to ravage to the delicate ecosystem of the Everglades, and scientists hoped that last January's historic cold snap would put a big dent in the invasive snake population. Unfortunately, most of those slimy bastards managed to survive the big chill. Not even Mother Nature herself can stop these snakes.

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