Monday, October 04, 2010

Speaking of turtles. There was an article in the NYT yesterday about loggerhead turtles in the Gulf and the legions of volunteers who have identified nests and have shipped them very carefully to the Atlantic side so the baby turtles hit clean un-oiled water after they hatch. I wept on the paper reading the story. Baby turtles with their little flippers, turtles with wings. Mother turtles don't lay eggs until they're 30 years old. The volunteers listen to the nests with stethoscopes so they can tell when the eggs are getting ready to hatch. Then the turtles dig out of the sand and blast off to the water like wind-up toys.

I would totally be a volunteer if I lived there. I'd be a turtle midwife.

2 comments:

Valerie Loveland said...

Aw, baby turtles.

beth coyote said...

Right?