Leatherbacks

            I’ve decided to change things up a little with this post.  Rather than composing a new entry, I’m basically posting a letter I wrote to my parents back in 1987.  I’ve edited it a little for grammar and tense, although I thought it stood by itself pretty well.  But first a little background.  In 1987 I was a senior veterinary student at Purdue University in search of a practice with which to serve my externship.  My sister, Dianna, was then living in St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and took it upon herself to contact the local veterinary clinic there.  A very generous Crago Animal Clinic gave me the opportunity to spend nearly two months in paradise, but I just look at it as a sacrifice for my education.  Many opportunities were opened to me.  Mornings were spent at the clinic, but afternoons were spent lounging on the beach and snorkeling the crystal clear waters off Cane Bay.  There was Carnival on St. Thomas and Easter on St. John.  However, one adventure stands above all others.  My sister, being the bold adventurer of the family, arranged for her and me to spend a night with an Earthwatch group who was studying nesting Leatherback sea turtles on the southwest corner of the island.  What follows is my account of that evening.  I want to stress that this is not meant as a scientific treatise on leatherback turtles, and I have done nothing to verify the information included.  It is simply my recollection of statements I had heard that night on the beach.  So with that in mind, here is my great turtle adventure.

April 14, 1987

            Last night Dianna and I had the chance of a lifetime- to participate in a turtle watch for nesting leatherback sea turtles.   St. Croix is one of about half a dozen nesting sites in the Virgin Islands and one of about a dozen sites worldwide.  This particular beach holds the distinction of attracting the largest nesting population of leatherbacks in US waters.  The beach, Sandy Point Beach near Frederiksted, is ideal for these turtles.  It is a long stretch of sand with deep water access.  There are no rocks or coral reefs to interfere with the turtles’ approach and the area has been classified as a nature preserve.  Last night we had an additional bonus (at least initially) of a full moon which illuminated the entire strip of beach with a soft, silver light.  Spotting a turtle would be easy.

            Our leaders for this event were a pair of biologists who give up six months of their lives to aid and document the nesting and hatching of these turtles.  Ten hours a night, seven days a week, these two scientists, along with a group of Earthwatch volunteers, patrol this beach, collect data and play host to groups of interested onlookers such as us.  The plan last night was to position Dianna, myself and about seven other individuals who had come along to watch in the center of the beach.  The Earthwatch volunteers would move on down to the far end until 9:00 at which time they would walk the length of the beach in search of turtles.  If no turtles were seen, they would reposition themselves at the opposite end of the beach until the following hour when they would again make the patrol.  Dianna and I had decided to walk the beach for a while and soon found ourselves sitting with the Earthwatch group listening to turtle facts.  At about 8:30 we decided to continue our walk along the shore.  We had moved about 100 yards up the beach when I noticed a large black form emerging from the water.  The rush of adrenalin was incredible, and it took a lot not to run right up to the turtle.  The signal for a turtle was to be three flashes with a flashlight to be answered by one flash from the other group; however, I had left our flashlight with one of the people in our group so I had to run back down the beach to the Earthwatch group.  Shortly, there were a dozen people standing in silence in the moonlight watching this lone creature heave her body along the sand.

Dianna and I admiring turtle

            We kept our distance as she climbed the beach so she would not be frightened and return to the sea.  It is amazing how quickly these giant animals can move through the sand, and it took little time for this female to choose a spot near the vegetation line to dig her nest.  We could see sand flying into the air as she began body molding, the process of shifting her body and digging with her flippers until she makes a depression in the sand large enough to fit her body.  Then slowly and methodically she began the process of digging the primary hole into which she would lay between 60 and 100 eggs.  She would carefully push one of her rear fins into the sand, curl it under her, and then bring out a “handful” of sand.  This continued until a shaft three feet deep was created.  This particular female had chosen a very dry area so the hole periodically caved in slightly and was partially filled.  It was our fear that she would have to abandon this site and seek out a more suitable patch of sand, but she stopped shifting her body and patiently continued her dig until a suitable hole was created.

            Finally, she grew quiet and covered the hole with her rear fins. This was the signal that she was about to begin laying eggs.  At this point instinct and maternal drive become so strong you can handle them with the female apparently oblivious to everything around her.  This is when the Earthwatch team sprang into action.  Her length (about five feet) and width (about three feet) were recorded.  One woman recorded all distinguishing marks on a prepared diagram of the turtle.  Her rear fins were pulled aside and nest depth was measured and recorded.  Dianna helped another volunteer count the eggs as they were laid.  The eggs themselves look like the cue ball in a pool game- white, round, glistening but with a pliable shell which allows them to survive the long fall to the sand.  She would strain slightly and then two or three eggs would shoot out into the nest.  This continued for nearly 20 minutes until the yokeless eggs (small, infertile eggs that are thought to aid in maintaining the moisture of the nest) appeared, marking the end of the lay.  Soon she would begin to push sand over the eggs creating a slight mound.  She would make several other mounds to disguise the actual nest site.

The pink spot (3rd eye) is visible here. 

            The leatherback turtle is quite a sight to behold.  Her shell is very smooth but has a series of ridges running its length which makes it appear very much like the hull of a small boat turned upside down.  The shell is relatively soft giving rise to the name “leatherback.”  She is black with white streaks along the ridges of her shell, and she has a large pink spot on the top of her head which is believed to be a light sensor or “third eye.”  With some individuals, missing fins and scarred flesh tell the tale of narrow escapes from sharks and killer whales, the natural predators of adult leatherbacks.  Because of her massive size and inability to expand her shell, breathing is quite labored.  She must arch her neck forward and upward to draw in a loud, slow gasping breath.  Hearing that sound coming from this prehistoric creature on a lonely beach in the dark of night is an eerie yet exhilarating experience.  Because she takes in so much salt, the leatherback has developed a means of eliminating the excess salt through a constant stream of tears.  Although this is a continuous process, the tears are especially evident when the turtle is on land.  Because of their thick, viscous nature the tears hang from the turtle’s eyes giving the impression that she is crying.   She may be five or six feet long and from fin tip to fin tip may be eight feet wide.  Last night we had the privilege of assisting in the first attempt ever made by this this team to weigh a leatherback.  They erected a large tripod over her and passed two straps beneath her through tunnels they had dug in the sand.  The straps were attached to a scale suspended on a series of pulleys.  Then with people steadying the tripod we hoisted her into the air, her back fins still instinctively pushing invisible sand onto her nest.  The scale read 700 lbs.

Digging tunnel for strap

One strap in place.

            Seven hundred pounds is a pretty good sized turtle, but the team leaders talked of another turtle, “Snaggle Tooth” which also nested on this beach.  Snaggle Tooth, they said, was as big as they come and much larger than this female.  Suddenly, from the point- THREE FLASHES!  Another turtle had come ashore.  Immediately, Susan (the researcher with our group) and an Earthwatch volunteer headed down the beach to begin collecting data on the new turtle.  We continued to tag this female, one tag in a front fin and another in the rear fin.  This particular turtle had come ashore the night before but had turned back before laying any eggs or before they could tag her.  It was at this point that the radio crackled, “Earth-base ‘S’ to earth-base ‘B,’ we have the giant one down here.  She’s body molding right now so you’ll have time to make it down here and get a weight on her.”  What luck!  Other people had been out all week and did well to see one turtle (usually after 3 AM.)  Here it was only 9:30 and we had two turtles on the beach.  Not only that, but one of them was Snaggle Tooth herself.  The excitement started to mount, and we almost ran down the beach afraid in some way that we might miss this “legend.”  Not even the light rain which had started could dampen our spirits.

            She, too, was at the vegetation line, nosed up to a small tree.  At first she didn’t look much bigger than the female we had just left, but as we got closer the difference became obvious.  She was at least a foot longer and overall had a much larger build.  Her head was at least a foot in width.  Her nickname was well deserved since some early encounter had left her with half a lower jaw and a twisted, scarred face.  She would look up to breath and flash what looked like a crooked but endearing grin.  It can certainly be said that this grand old lady had character. 

A good shot of Snaggle Tooth's missing jaw.

            Although she was near the vegetation, her nest was near the water and in an area that would be prone to erosion, so the decision was made to relocate the nest.  This is where the measurement of nest depth becomes important.  Like many other reptiles the sex of the egg is determined by the temperature of its environment.  Since temperature varies with depth, it is essential that the eggs be placed at the same depth as that from which they were removed.  So as soon as she would lay some eggs, they would be snatched from the nest by an Earthwatch volunteer and placed in a mesh bag.  They would have two hours to select a new nest site and bury the eggs.  Then in 60 days the eggs will hatch, and hundreds of little babies only four inches long will push their way to the surface (again under the cover of darkness) where they will congregate until the entire clutch has emerged.  Then, oriented by the light of the ocean, they will clumsily make their way through a gauntlet of predators to the water.  Some will be killed by ghost crabs.  Others will fall victim to birds or dogs.  Still others will be trapped in tire tracks or hoof prints in the sand.  Those which do reach the water are met by hundreds of hungry fish.  It is easy to see how that for every one hundred eggs that hatch, only one hatchling will survive.

Bob with  a handful of eggs.

            Her laying complete, the moment of truth arrived.  We were about to weigh perhaps the largest leatherback to nest on this beach.  It would take everyone there to steady the tripod and hoist this massive animal into the air.  All the men took hold of the line and HEAVED!  Slowly, she began to rise from the sand.  HEAVE!  The tripod began to lean to one side.  HEAVE!  Even with the system of pulleys designed to lighten the strain, you could feel the immense weight on the rope.  HEAVE!  The tripod leaned even more, but her body finally cleared the sand.  Bob (the other researcher) read the scale and announced that she weighed 504 kg.  She was 1100 pounds and perhaps even more since her rear flippers may still have been on the ground.  Half a ton of turtle hung there in the rain, thick tears streaming from both eyes, that jawless grin flashing with each breath, and an odd assortment of people surrounding her, stroking her, measuring her, and photographing her.  And somewhere in the depths of the ocean swam her mate who is twice her size.  The only contact he’ll ever have with land was that perilous dash he made for the ocean following his emergence from the sand years ago.  Maybe he was born on this very beach or perhaps he came from Mexico or Africa.  No one knows much about the males since their life is spent in the deep ocean somewhere between the nesting site and Nova Scotia, which is where these females will soon be returning.

Author shining light on Snaggle Tooth's pink spot while Susan places numbered marker for photo.

            Snaggle Tooth was slowly eased back down to the beach where she continued her nesting ritual by filling in what was now an empty nest.  Despite our intrusion into her activities, she would return in 10 nights to repeat the process.  She may return as many as 10 times and then disappear for two years, when a new group of people will be lucky enough to witness this miraculous event.  I’m sure they too will long remember that jawless grin of this gentle giant.

            And we will also remember the dedication of this group of people who gave up so much to study and protect these animals.  Picture in your mind an 1100 lb. turtle slowly digging a nest on a dark beach.  It is raining, yet around this animal lies a dozen individuals on their stomachs peering into the ever deepening hole.  Few words are spoken, we are hypnotized by the sheer fortune of being a part of such a rare event with so special an animal.  It is an experience everyone should have in his/her life but so few ever will.

My sister, Dianna giving Snaggle Tooth a good bye stroke.

That was my letter home.  What I didn’t mention was how I slipped away from the group while they were working with Snaggle Tooth so I could go back down the beach for some alone time with the first turtle.  I sat in the sand and watched her rock her body to cover the nest and watched her build false nest mounds to disguise the real thing.  There was a second chance a week or so later for Dianna and me to follow the team, although this time we were accompanied by a photographer for National Geographic.  Not a single turtle showed up that night.  Recently reviewing Bob and Susan’s data from that summer, only 30 turtles nested on Sandy Point in 1987, and we were lucky enough to see two of them.  I am forever grateful to my sister for arranging this wonderful evening and for the Earthwatch team for letting us tag along.  How I would love to return and do this all over again.

I apologize for the quality of these photos.  My film was damaged in the camera (perhaps sand or salt got into it.)

Peonies

Tucked away in a small box on the top shelf of my father’s closet is an old 8 mm film.  It is a chronicle of our family during the years of 1965 and 1966.  One scene in particular has always brought me a chuckle.  In this brief snippet I am seen as a three or four year old boy walking through my backyard on a sunny May day.  Then as now, the yard was lined by peony bushes in full flower.  I stroll along looking at the bushes and eventually stop to smell one of the blooms.  Although there is no sound, my father who is holding the camera asks me to pick one of the blossoms for my mother, so I try to oblige him.  I take the peony bloom in my hand and give a gentle tug, but nothing happens.  Undaunted, I decide to give it a little more effort, but unfortunately the result is the same.  As the smile slowly fades from my face, I shift tactics and grab the bloom with both hands, lifting and pulling with all my might.  Nothing! I start stamping my feet, and as I turn to the camera I am clearly frustrated.  My face is red and there is a trace of tears welling up in my eyes.  Even then my pride reared its ugly head and you can see my determination grow as I try to accomplish the job and regain my dignity.  To show that I am up to the task, I put one hand behind my back, confident that this time I had the strength to win the battle.  I take hold of the bloom and charge away from the bush, but the stem does not yield and I am quickly snapped back.  Repeatedly, I lunge and lunge, and repeatedly the peony holds fast.  Finally out of sympathy, my father stops filming.  

One of the ever present ants exploring a bud.

That was about 45 years ago and so much in my life has changed, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that fencerow of bushes.  One of the many wonderful qualities about peonies is their long life, and these plants, at nearly half a century of age, are a testament to that fact.  They are as full and their heady fragrance still perfumes the air in April just as it did all those many years ago.  It is a scent I can still appreciate, but now that my sense of smell has greatly diminished, I can no longer appreciate the aroma of the foliage itself.  I became acquainted with it as a boy searching for the occasional errant baseball that had disappeared into their dark recesses.  With only a general idea of where the ball had disappeared, I would move bush by bush, separating the stems and searching their bases for the ball.  Two things would become obvious - the air was always cool and moist below these bushes, and there was a very distinct smell to the leaves.  In my memory the smell is still quite strong, but in actuality my nose can no longer register it.

For many years the peonies became part of a family tradition.   Each May my mother would sell bouquets of their blooms for those who wanted to decorate graves.  Although Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) was originally recognized as a day to honor fallen veterans, it has evolved into a day to remember all loved ones who have passed on.  Peonies were a very popular flower to leave at grave sites in those days, although the tradition has seemed to fade over the years.  But in those days, when May rolled around, Mom would make signs to place in the local grocery stores advertising our flowers.  I was given the job of taking a sign and nailing it to a telephone pole along 16^th Street, the busy avenue that ran a block from our house.  Then we would wait for the people to come.  The total was never large, but each year a respectable number would knock on our door and ask for some flowers.  Mom would grab her scissors and lead them out back to pick out their bouquet.  Our bushes were pink and white with a couple of cherished red ones that bloomed a deep mahogany.  These were Mom’s favorites, and I think she tried steering people away from them, but I’m sure if they asked, she snipped them a few red blooms, too.

Our peony selling days eventually came to an end for a couple of reasons.  Perhaps the greatest reason was that we started spending all of our weekends, when the “flower business” was at its peak, at our trailer at Raccoon Lake.  Weekends were the prime time for visiting cemeteries and people were looking for fresh blooms.  Another reason was that our bushes tended to bloom late, and it seemed that over time their bloom period finally became too late for Memorial Day.   That opened the door wider for our biggest competitor, the Huebners who lived behind us.  The Huebners held a couple of big advantages over us.  First, their peonies were an earlier blooming variety, so they had a good supply ready when the holiday rolled around.  Secondly, they lived on 16^th Street itself, so they had lots of traffic.  Our house sat on a dead end, so unless you lived on our street, you never passed our house.  I’m sure our ads at the store and my sign on the telephone pole probably brought them a little extra business.  While trying to find our house, the customer would invariably drive past their house with its own “Poenies for Sale” sign posted out front and turn in.  But I don’t hold that against them.  They were a wonderful family and had as much right to sell their flowers as we did.  In fact, one of those weekends when we were “playing” at the lake, Mrs. Huebner sold some of our flowers.  We did not know this until we returned home Sunday evening, and she came strolling from her backyard through ours.  She knocked on the door and presented my mother with money, explaining in her thick German accent, “While you were gone it rained, and all your peonies looked so sad beaten to the ground.  I shook the water off, but they would not stand up.  I did not want to see them lying on the ground, so I clipped some and sold them.”  We would have never noticed the missing blooms, but the Huebners were an honest couple. 

They say peonies are one of those generational plants that gets passed from family to family through the years.  Such is the case with my family’s plants.  I have owned two homes in my life, and at each one I have planted peonies from my parents’ backyard.  My sister has even presented me with starts from the Huebner’s yard, which to me is just as meaningful.   

This year the peonies will again serve their original purpose for our family.  In a week or two, we will gather a bundle of the pink, white and burgundy blooms, and we will take them to the cemetery.  There they will be placed in a vase at my mother’s grave.  It will be our first Memorial Day without her, but I know she will be happy seeing her peonies once again.

My mother, very much loved and very much missed.

Treasure Chest

I grew up in a much simpler time.  There were no computers, no videos or video games to distract us.  Televisions were mainly black and white and got three or four channels, at best.  For my generation, you spent your free time outdoors, and your best friend was your imagination.  And I will admit, my imagination in those days was very well developed. That is not to say that we didn’t have toys with which to play, we just didn’t have the great bulk of “things” that kids seem to accumulate these days.  I’ve already written about my favorite accoutrement to play, my swing set.  But the swing was not the sole attraction of my backyard.

First and foremost, given that I am from the great state of Indiana where basketball has always reigned supreme, there was the basketball goal.  Early on after my parents moved into the house in which I was to grow up, my dad hauled in an old telephone pole and sunk it in the ground in the back corner of the yard.  He then fashioned a wooden backboard and hung a rim.  There was no official court, just lawn and hard packed dirt.  The free-throw line was where the grass was most worn away.  I tried and tried to become a proficient basketball player, but somehow that skill (as did most athletic skills) eluded me.  However, it did not prevent many fun games of horse or 21.  In later years as various trees were planted and grew large, new twists were added.  We started trying to make baskets by throwing the ball over the apple tree.  Or there were three point contests from the edge of the garden.   A few years ago, after nearly four decades of standing vigil in the back yard, the goal which had seen the family grow up and move away finally gave way to age and the elements.  You wouldn’t think there would be much emotion with such a thing, but it was like clipping the umbilical cord to my youth, and it also marked the point in my father’s life where he admitted he was getting too old to play basketball any more.  I am proud to say, he stuck it out into his 80’s, however.  There is a brief aside to this story.  When the goal finally came down a few years ago, you could have found a particular knothole a few feet up from its base that was filled with some light colored material.  It was my chewing gum that I had stuck in there in 1976 and into which I had pressed the number “76” into with my fingernail.  That was the country’s bicentennial year, and wanting to mark its passage and looking for a way to deposit my worn-out gum, that was my solution.  I never dreamed it would remain for almost 30 more years.

For a brief period, a tether ball pole was added.  I can remember only a few games, more with my sister and her friends than myself, but the tether ball pole held a different fascination for me.  At some point the ball snapped off the rope, and rather than replace it, the pole was left as is, with just a fragment of rope hanging from it.  This is the period I most enjoyed because it gave me something other than my swing set on which to climb.  I enjoyed shimmying up the thin, metal pole to reach the top. It might have served as the mast of an imaginary ship, or perhaps it was the palm tree I would climb to look for signs of civilization once I had shipwrecked.  Or it was simply a test of my strength and ability, but regardless the purpose, the pole was still fun to climb.

I've used this photo before, but it is the only one I know which shows the old tire sandbox.

I can also remember all the time I spent playing in our sandbox.  It was made from an old tractor tire that my father had re-purposed for his then growing family.  It was very large and could easily seat a few children around its perimeter.  It is so early in my life, that much of its memory is lost to me.  I can vaguely recall going with my father to buy sand for it.  We did not go to a store, but rather to something more like a strip pit, I believe.  I don’t recall how we got the sand home, but I do remember the trip to get it.  I recall a few little toy figures that “lived” in the sandbox.  They would be buried in the sand and finding one was always like digging up buried treasure.  Not being fine beach sand, it had a way of forming hard clumps that I would break up with my hands.  These often formed in the deeper recesses of the tire itself, which is also where the buried toys most often lurked.  My neighbor and I made many mud pies and sand cakes with sand and a little water, but it was my goal to create a formula to turn it into concrete.  I don’t recall what I would add to the sand and water, but I was always confident I would succeed.  As much fun as playing in the sand was running around the tire’s perimeter.  I seem to remember having wrestling matches where the goal was to shove your opponents off the tire while remaining standing to become “king of the hill.”  When we had all outgrown the sandbox, Dad cleared it out and took the tire to a friend.  That is when I learned something I had never noticed in all the years we played in it.  My father had carved his and my mother’s initials into the hard rubber sides when they had first gotten the tire. 

Me wielding my small Indianapolis Indians bat

One of my favorite areas, yet the most dreaded, was our toy chest that sat under the old elm tree.  It was quite large and constructed of wood and thin strips of metal, with a curved lid and a latch which gave it the appearance of the classic treasure chest from every pirate story I had ever read or watched on television.  And that is what seemed so magical about it.  For me, it was a true treasure chest, and I think I always half-expected to open its lid to reveal piles of gold coins and jewelry.  What was revealed when the lid was opened was what I least liked about that chest. It made the perfect home for dozens of spiders.  When we would go to retrieve something from its dark interior, the lid would be lifted and spiders would scatter, their webs and egg baskets would clinging to its underside.  You would make a quick survey of the contents, then reach in and grab your toy as fast as you could before running away from the trunk and allowing the lid to fall closed with a loud “thunk.” 

Ours were blue and red.

Inside was the sports equipment and outdoor toys with which we played.  There was an ancient football actually constructed from pigskin, with a smooth suede feel to it.  And there was our basketball which eventually went over the back fence into the pen with Gigi, the German shepherd who lived behind us.  Gigi was large and loud and scared us all.  She lived in a garage but had a short, enclosed metal run from her doggy door to the outside.  The passage out was at a right angle, so you could never see in the door to know if she was headed out or not.  When the ball bounced into her pen, you had to steady your nerves, make a quick leap over the fence, run to the ball, fling it back into the yard then quickly dash back to the fence before she emerged barking and charging.  It was very frightening to me, so when I was alone and the ball bounced into her pen, I was usually too scared to retrieve it.  This happened on one occasion, and I just left the ball there and went inside.  I finally told my brother, and we were able to retrieve it a few days later, but not before Gigi had ripped the entire covering from the ball.  It was still inflated, but it was just a soft rubber ball after that.  Tossed in with these was our scoop ball set, a pair of curved plastic handles and a whiffle ball that served as a tame Midwestern version of jai alai.  You could throw a wicked curve ball with that set, but I frequently used the handles as my peg leg when pretending to be a pirate.  There were assorted other baseballs and softballs and a collection of bats which had been relocated here from my father’s old army bag in which he used to transport them to the little league games he helped coach.  And finally, there were my brother’s old metal Tonka toys including a dump truck, a road grader, a flatbed trailer and an old Jewel Tea Company truck.  You could always pull something fun from that old chest.

Although not ours, this is how the Jewel Tea truck looked until I painted it.

My brother's Tonka road grader

The old Tonka truck hooked up to the flatbed trailer.

The remainder of my entertainment sprang from what grew naturally.  There were trees to climb.  I had a small tree house in the old apple tree next to the basketball goal, but I loved climbing the large silver maple even more.  There I would spread myself on a wide branch and try napping or sit and read a book. For fun one afternoon, I took a volume of our Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia into the big maple and memorized the first half of the Gettysburg address. Iris leaves made wonderful swords, and we waged many a sword fight.  Bugs were plentiful so we caught large grasshoppers, praying mantis, bumble bees and lightening bugs.  We didn’t have to watch nature programs, we learned it firsthand.

Everything put together could not have cost much and most were hand-me-downs, but to me I was the richest kid in the world.  I do not recall wanting for anything.  I only wish my own children could appreciate such simple things.  My wife and I are guilty for that, I guess.  We have always given our children too much, and we encouraged technology at an early age.  We never kicked them out the back door and told them to entertain themselves.  Although they both showed those early bursts of creative imagination, I felt the seed never was allowed to hit fertile soil and take root as it should.  Maybe when I become a grandparent in a few years, I will rectify my errors.  I vow now to get them outdoors, to walk in the woods, to have stick races on the creek and to sit back and see what they can accomplish with a few simple toys and their imagination.  I think that is one of the greater gifts I could provide.  After all, sometimes a greater treasure than gold and jewels can be found in al old pirate chest.