News

By 8:00 AM this morning we’d rescued a sea turtle and I’d helped load it into the back of the ambulance for the Turtle Hospital. Yep, it is a hospital just for sea turtles. They are slow moving, and can be large animals, so they, like manatees take a lot of boat damage. They also get caught in fishing lines, swallow baited hooks, garbage, and basically struggle to share their oceans with us.

This morning I woke in the black dark so early that it was still night. I tried to convince myself to go back to sleep, vacation and all, but it was no use, I was awake. I slipped out of bed, trying not to wake Jon, there was no need for both of us to get up this early. I grabbed a pair of cargo shorts on the way out, and a swim suit, because that was all the clothes I had without opening drawers and closets. Jon’s parents, our daughter, Trinity, were all asnooze in their beds. Why was I up? I had no idea.

I’ll write, get my pages for the day done and out of the way. I’d make this odd version of insomnia work for me. I made tea and while it was brewing discovered my computer was dead. Keyboard frozen, and couldn’t even power it off, just the frozen screen. So now I was up in the dark and couldn’t work. Crap. I started to let the whole situation ruin my mood on my lovely vacation, but in the end I took my tea out to the balcony and took a few deep breaths. I’m a big believer that if you’re walking your path and doing what Deity has planned for you there are very few coincidences, so there was a reason that I was up butt-early with a broken computer on vacation. I was supposed to see something that wouldn’t have been there later, or experience something that would be gone later. I waited to figure out what it was, and as it got light enough to see the water I saw the reason I was up early. There was a sea turtle in the surf on the beach below.

I grabbed binoculars and watched it raise it’s head to breath and then go just under the surface. I’d never seen one up this close before, not in the wild. I thought the turtle had nested on our beach, and I was seeing it’s return to the sea. I thought, that was so worth getting up early and I said a thank you that I was here watching, then things got weird. She seemed to be taking a long time to swim out to sea. I went down to the beach to see if I could find drag marks where she’d come to shore, but there were none. She was back in sight now, and I could follow her with my bare eyes. I called Jon on my iPhone that I’d shoved in my cargo pocket. “Sea Turtle, I’m on the beach, get a camera.” His sleepy voice didn’t even argue. I love my husband.

By the time he started taking pictures from the balcony I was standing at the very edge of the surf watching the turtle. It was flailing it’s front flippers like a person would use it’s arms if they were drowning. She was also coming up for air every few minutes and I knew from our tour of the Turtle Hospital that wasn’t right. I couldn’t remember the exact time, but I knew Sea Turtles could hold their breath a lot longer than that. Between the flailing flippers, and the constant coming up for air . . . well, if she’d been a person I would have said she was drowning. It seemed ridiculous to say that an animal that lived in the ocean was in danger of drowning, but turtles breath air just like us, and they can drowned. That’s actually usually how they die entangled in fishing lines or nets, they just can’t come up to breath, and they drown. But there was no fishing line here today. The turtle looked unencumbered, but she was struggling.

Jon was down on the beach by that time and I told him to call the Turtle Hospital. He got their answering machine. Crap.  The turtle was paralleling the beach, struggling, gasping for air. It’s illegal to touch a Sea Turtle, did you know that? It’s a federally protected species and you’re not allowed to mess with it. It’s to prevent poaching and stupidity, but the law doesn’t have a good Samaritan clause. I am not a great swimmer, neither is Jon. We can swim, but the ocean is a different kind of swimming. The turtle was a wild animal and I didn’t know what was wrong with it. I said, out loud, “If you’re hurt, come to shore. I’ll help you.” The turtle turned towards shore, not a straight line, but a steady progress closer to me.

When she was in only a couple of feet of water I could see damage to her shell. I was betting a boat propeller had hit her, we’d learn later that was the case.  She came to the surf edge. I was almost beside her now and could see the cracks and almost crush damage to one side of her shell. Sea gulls began to fly overhead like formally dressed vultures. I said to them, “You won’t get her. Go away.” They drifted off, but if she was helpless on the beach they’d be back. The turtle didn’t like pounding she was taking at the surf and turned to go back to sea. I yelled at Jon, “She’s going out again. She’ll drowned.” His said, “You can’t touch her.” I didn’t want to hurt her, or get bitten, but I couldn’t let her go. I dropped to my knees in the water and made my body a barrier to one side of her shell like a rock. I kept myself well back of the powerful jaws, but she started turning to make a real try for the open ocean. Jon finally got a real person at the Turtle Hospital. It turned out to be our guide on the tour earlier in the week, Tara. I yelled, “Get me permission to touch her!” We’d learned on our tour that a turtle rehabber could give someone permission to touch a turtle if it’s life was in danger. I was a very determined barrier but if I couldn’t grab the turtle I couldn’t keep her at the shore. Crap!

“You can touch her,” Jon yelled.

Now I could touch the turtle, but the spine is attached to the shell so the boat had probably injured the spine, so in effect I was trying to touch a spinal injury in rolling surf, where the patient could crush my hand. I grabbed her as gently as I could to steady us both. “Tara says, push at her back flippers try to ease her onto the beach,” Jon called.

I tried, but it wasn’t enough in the water with the turtle not wanting to cooperate. I got her close to the shore. By this time I was chest deep in the surf. Jon waded out, saying, “Tara says we can grab her front flippers and try to drag her just enough to make sure she doesn’t wash back.” That worked better, but we were both tentative, worried we’d injure her spine more. Did the shell act like a back board and neck brace for a person, or was the body confirmation so different that analogies like that didn’t work at all? But we got her up on the more solid wet sand. She wasn’t in danger of washing back and she wasn’t going to drown, her nostrils were above water, but she didn’t like the water slapping her in the face, so I half lay down in the surf to form a barrier to protect her head from the waves. Lying down in the water also blocked the worst of the waves from her injured side, and maybe that helped, too. Now it was just waiting for Tara and the turtle ambulance to get here, and pray the turtle was alive to be rescued.

Jon went off to help Tara find us. His parents and Trinity were down watching the turtle now. His mom took most of the pictures you’ll see here. We didn’t let anyone else get close to the turtle. One for safety, and two, Jon and I had permission, no one else did. I was very glad to see Tara come across the beach. She agreed it was boat damage, but thought it looked fixable. Yay! Tara took the side of the shell with the damage, I took the other side. She told me where to hold for my safety and the turtle’s comfort. She moved my hand abruptly at the top of the carapace(upper shell) because I had been within bite range. This is not a Disney moment, folks, an injured animal doesn’t always understand you’re trying to help. But I gripped where told to, and she asked if I was ready. My answer, “One, two, three,” and we lifted. Tara is about my size, so the two petite women carried the sea turtle to the ambulance. I liked that, I liked that a lot.

We got the sea turtle into the ambulance, a plastic kiddie pool instead of a stretcher waiting to receive her. We offered to cover her vet bills, and we got to name her. Jon said, “Laurell should name her.”

“Freja,” I said.

Tara didn’t know the name.

“She’s the Norse Goddess of creativity, fertility, and good luck,” I said.

“I like that, she needs a lucky name,” Tara said.

We all agreed and Tara drove Freja the Sea Turtle off to the hospital. That was my morning, how was yours?

Here’s some of the photos: