Day 97

Snapping turtle at the Ipswich Y.

We arrived at the Y this afternoon to see two young boys of about 9 or 10 trying to coax this enormous snapping turtle across the parking lot, fending off cars while she made her slow and primitive way across the hot tarmac.  Nick and I joined them and then the boys had to go off to their lesson and Nick to teach, so I promised to stay and see her across the rest of the parking lot and the little road before the river.  Nick told me later that the boys were congratulating each other for saving yet another animal, apparently they had saved a bird and something else before this, and they were very proud of their contribution to saving the ecosystem!

We need more boys like that and my heart is glad to hear and see these sensitive souls.  I remember seeing a young seal sleeping on the beach in Winthrop, where we first lived when we moved to America.  The mother was hanging around in the shallow water while the youngster took a nap in the sun, and Matthew and Nick and I were gazing wonderingly at it from the walkway above the beach.  Enter four boys, whose first action was to begin throwing stones at it! The same reaction as the first sailors to see polar bears - Oh, let's slaughter them.  Huh?  Incomprehensible, indefensible.

These snapping turtles are dangerous to pick up, because they are SNAPPING turtles, they can bite off your fingers if you pick them up in the usual way, on either side of the shell. They will turn their heads and stretch to where your hands are holding them, and casually bite off a digit!   The boys remember all the tortoises we rescued in South Africa, on those long dirt roads in the Eastern Cape, they were always wandering across, and we would carefully pick them up and inevitably get peed upon, and then deposit them in a safe spot in the general direction in which they had been going in the first place.

This old lady was going back to her nesting grounds, apparently they go back to the place they hatched from, which is very sad sometimes because a house has been built there, or lots of roads, and so there is a very high mortality rate even amongst adults.  But the lucky ones can live to be 100 years old!  This one is very large, so pretty old, so a lot of development must have happened in her lifetime.  Such marvellous prehistoric tails they have, they are like little dinosaurs with a carapace on top.  When she finally made it all the way across, she bushwhacked through old stiff stalks and brush, and then just lay down exhausted.  Amazing, just following her nose and her instinct in a straight line toward the water, with infinite faith, striding along on her old old scaly feet.

89F today!  That's nearly 32C (for the rest of the world, except Belize, Myanmar and Liberia)!  Very hot.  I walked about 1 mile today because my chesty cough is not very conducive to running.  And the ticks are out!  I already have 5 tick-bites and it is only the beginning of April!  I detest them and wish to eradicate them from the face of the earth.  They do no good to anyone, only a tiny sector of animals eats them, and all these creatures do not absolutely rely on ticks for their entire diet.  Turkeys, guinea-fowl and egrets are the only ones I know of.  Guinea-fowl eat bees too, otherwise I would acquire some to eat the ticks.  And they do so much harm to so many animals, they really need to go.

So here is my portrait of a Tick Eradicator, a Kreepy Krauly type thing like the South African swimming pool cleaner invention.  Although this is a fuzzy furry thing which rolls around on several wheels in the fields and woods, picking up ticks, who then march like zombies, lured by a chemical smell utterly beguiling to all ticks who simply cannot resist it.  They all then make their way up to a central trapping system which tortures the ticks (no, not really) which just kills the ticks.  Maybe I can patent it!  I really REALLY hate ticks.