Saving Baby Turtles

While visiting my sister in Barbados I got the opportunity to help look for baby turtles to rescue. Unfortunately in modern society that lives by the beach, the lights that the humans produce are brighter than the moon and the baby turtles follow the light to get to the ocean, which causes them to go the wrong way, become stranded and die which is tragic. On Barbados local conservationists have several strategies for trying to prevent this including digging ditches or building barriers between the nesting sites and the road so that the turtles can’t physically cross them but the most common strategy is for volunteers to keep an eye on nesting sites, figure out when the turtles are hatching and monitor them to make sure they are getting to the ocean safely. 

When my sister said we were going to look for turtles of course I was excited! As a lifelong animal lover, this was a great opportunity. What I wasn’t expecting is how hot, dirty, difficult and dangerous that task is. Our guide took us to an area that was near a nesting site. It was kind of late in the season and we didn’t get out there very early so our chances of finding anything were pretty low. Our guide was fearless, caring only for the turtles and without regard for her own safety would walk through trash infested yards and even sewage pipes in sandals and a skirt! I was horrified at the amount of trash and waste there was everywhere. I even spotted a used condom laying on the ground. By some miracle we found two baby turtles near death in a yard. One was doing ok, flapping its flippers vigorously, a good sign. The other didn’t look so good. It was lethargic and had an obvious injury to its flipper. We took them both down to the beach straightaway and released them into the ocean. I have said more than a few prayers that they made it and will grow into happy adult turtles. 

What I learned that day is that saving baby turtles is hard, dangerous work and my respect for these selfless, brave volunteers shot up about 1000%. For all the conservationists out there on the front lines, thank you for all you do! 

Beautiful Scenery, Ugly Task

I took this beautiful, scenic picture on my way to dump two weeks’ worth of poop into a giant hole in the ground. 

Let me provide some context. For about six months a few years ago, I lived off grid in a trailer in the woods in Fiddletown, CA. Living off grid was all the rage in the blog world, and I wanted to give it a try. I was looking for a place to live, and ran across an ad on Craigslist. I called the owner, drove to the property and looked around. I was sure it was too good to be true but after talking to him about what I would need to get set up, I decided to go for it. And then spent the next month living at my sister’s house while we had the flood of the decade. I couldn’t drive out to the ranch in my little Ford Focus without getting stuck in the mud, much less assemble my solar set up in the pouring rain. So I waited. Finally the weather cleared up and my brother came up with me to help me set up my solar panels. They were big and unwieldy, and he is a handyman so he taught me a lot that day. I got everything set up and moved in. It was very exciting and a little scary at first. There were a lot more spiders than I would have liked, but I found that even though they freaked me out, I could deal with it. And there was a nice family right down the hill who I could interact with and get advice from, so it was a pretty nice set up. I only lived there part time in between house sitting jobs, which could be from a day to a week at a time. I had running water from the well and electricity from my solar panel, but the pilot light wouldn’t work and my landlord wasn’t that interested in fixing it so I had no heat, hot water, refrigerator or freezer. I had a nice little propane stove that I could heat water in and take sponge baths so it was just fine. When I turned on the stove and lit the flame, the spiders that had been living down in the burners all came running out. That was entertaining. And every day I found fresh mouse poop in my kitchen drawers. So I made sure to clean every utensil before I used it. I had a toilet in the bathroom and was told that urine was ok to drain out but feces and toilet paper had to go in a bucket lined with ash and straw. I figured it would smell pretty bad but after I covered my deposit with a generous amount of ash and straw, I found that it didn’t smell at all. Which brings us to the picture. When the bucket got relatively full, I would have to take it on a fairly long hike up a trail which then disappeared into a meadow. The owner showed me once when I visited but by the time I had to make the first trip I had forgotten where it was. So the little boy from the family was kind enough to take me. He wasn’t very old but he was whip smart. He helped his dad and the owner with all sorts of projects. Once we got to the top of the hill, there were two holes the owner had dug out with a tractor. For some reason, even though he had over 50 acres of land, he had chosen to place these holes right next to a neighbor that disapproved of this practice. So the boy told me I had to be very quiet so I didn’t attract the attention of the neighbor. Great. The other thing I learned very quickly is that the sides of the holes were sloped, so I had to be extremely careful not to lose my footing and fall in myself! There was no cell signal up there and the holes were easily ten feet deep, so that would have been a bad situation. I managed to get a foothold far enough in so that my poop and toilet paper went down into the hole, and returned to my trailer with my empty bucket. Fortunately, I didn’t spend a lot of time there between jobs so I only had to make that trip a few times.