The literature lied to me

Today was a perfect day! 70 degrees, sunny, little wind…I found one turtle. What is wrong with you turtles!!!! Don’t you read your own literature! Grrrrr…I’m not really mad, just a little annoyed that the one turtle I found was at the end of my route so I had to walk the path again. It was a hot walk, so after the walk I climbed the dunes on to the beachfront and took a dip in the ocean…with my clothes on. Didn’t have a bathing suit and at that point I didn’t really care. I can’t believe I’ve been living here for about two weeks and this is the first time I went swimming here. I work on a beach, why haven’t I taken advantage of it!

I didn’t find many turtles, but we found babies yesterday! They’re so cute! Granted they are eggs now, but they’ll hatch into cute little terrapins and scuttle into the salt marsh in a few months! Finding the nests is really tough though. We’ve been digging up every patted down area to find them, but until yesterday we didn’t find any real nests. Now that we’ve found 5, FIVE, nests I don’t feel like an idiot. I’ll put up pics later; there are at least 12 eggs in every nest we found. It must be tough for the mothers to lay up to 20 eggs, that's a lot for an animal the size of a dinner plate!

We also went kayaking the other day, while trying to catch turtles…its difficult to catch a turtle when you have a paddle in one hand, a net in the other, trying to chase after turtle heads popping up in the water, all the while trying not to tip over the kayak. It’s like Whack-a-Mole extreme outdoor edition; I loved it, and it’s completely free! I managed to find a little cove where a few of them were hanging out and got the paddle tangled up in the net at least thrice and I spent most of my time paddling back and forth after surfacing turtles only to have them scatter as soon as I put my paddle in the water. I caught one in the end! Skill or dumb luck? Don’t answer that.

While patrolling yesterday I got into several conversations because people wanted to know why I was wandering back and forth along the trail (I was following turtle tracks) and digging in the sand. By the time I turned around to walk back an older lady asked me if I was the “turtle girl”. Apparently word gets around fast on the beach. It certainly is a step up from “Hey lady” being pounded into your eardrums by a group of hyperactive first graders while guiding an aquarium tour. Turtle girl, I can live with that.

Turtle tally- 4 (and lots of little eggs)

PS- Emily passed her driver’s test! Yay! Now she won’t need to bike eight or so miles everyday to our study site when I leave!