Turtle Magic

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Owning a two-inch dime store turtle wasn’t unusual in the ’50s. Almost every household had one. Some came from pet stores. Others were prizes won at local fairs. Each came with a plastic “home” less than a foot long, complete with a swimming area and an island shaded by a snap-on brown tree trunk with a set of green leaves. You’d fill the basin with tap water and sprinkle something that looked like dried herbs into the water—its food.

           Sometimes I’d take mine out to crawl on the floor. Mostly, I ignored it.

           One day it went missing. Could it have climbed out of its enclosure? The whole family hunted for a while, then gave up. Months later I found it in the garage, behind a stack of boxes, alive.

           Other than at aquariums, my only other childhood turtle experience involved one a neighbor found near our yard. It was large, almost a foot long. With the best of intentions, my mother procured a big gray metal tub, filled it with water and placed the reptile gingerly inside. The problem? It was actually a land loving tortoise. It drowned.

           When living in Las Vegas in my twenties, my boyfriend and I house-sat for a couple who were childless. Their pets, including dime-store turtles now over half a foot long, were their children. Daily feeding included live mealworms, kept on a shelf above the bed.

            As I napped one afternoon, their cat jumped over my head and onto the shelf. The container of worms fell upside down onto the bed, all over me. I let out a scream that Fritz could hear several rooms away. He ran in to discover me jumping up and down, dancing crazily around the room.

           “Get them off me—now!” I yelled.

            It took a few minutes for him to discover what happened. I turned my head upside down, shaking it as hard as I could, while he yelled: “Stay still so I can get them out!”

           We picked up what we could—from my clothes, other parts of my body, and the bed. We vacuumed up the rest.

           Because my mealworm experience was intimately tied with feeding turtles, I didn’t consider myself a reptile enthusiast. But decades later, when vacationing in Costa Rica with my 11-year-old daughter Alicia, I decided to give turtles another chance. Why not visit them in their natural habitat?

           Pachiro Lodge was an eco-tourist’s fantasy—a rustic bungalow nestled in the rain- forested jungle, accessible only by plane or boat. Alicia was initially disappointed it lacked a swimming pool, but howler monkeys that arrived on a tree in front of our living quarters were a memorable diversion.

           “Mommy, look,” Alicia yelled to me from outside.

            I arrived to see at least eight of them scampering between nearby trees, chattering, hanging upside down, and chewing large leaves. Alicia used colored pencils to sketch them in her art book while I attempted to photograph their antics. We were both enthralled. 

           The first morning, after helping ourselves to a large plate of food from the buffet breakfast, the two of us were approached by a couple in their seventies.

           “Can we join you? I’m Hazel. My husband’s Harold.”

           Pointing toward the seats next to us, I smiled as Alicia and I introduced ourselves.

           Hazel’s slight frame matched her quiet voice, although she was the more talkative of the two.

            “We’re retired and travel a lot,” she shared. “But we’ve never been to Costa Rica before. It’s lovely.”

           Harold, with a stocky build that reflected too many desserts, volunteered:

           “I used to be an engineer. What do you do?”

“I teach women’s studies at a community college,” I replied.

           He said nothing in response.

            “Are you going on the turtle walk tonight?” Hazel asked.

            “I can’t go,” said Harold. “I was airlifted out of Africa because of my heart condition. I can’t do anything that requires physical exertion.”

           “I want to go,” said Hazel, “but I’m not sure about doing it on my own. We always do everything together.”

           “You don’t see well at night. I’d worry about you Hazel.”

            The event required night-time beach walking. There would be some moonlight, and the local guide would carry a red-lighted flashlight, so as not to disturb the turtles.

           “We are going,” I said. “Come with us. You won’t be alone. We’ll watch out for you.”

           At the end of the meal, Hazel stood up and announced:

           “OK. I’ll do it. I’m going to sign up now. See you there tonight.
           Harold sighed, and didn’t look happy.

            It was 10 p.m. when participants gathered at the boat dock. Harold was there too:

           “I’ll wait right here until you come back.”

           The licensed guide explained the rules to us: “No talking and no photographic lights. I’ll have the only flashlight that’s allowed. If a turtle’s spooked, she’ll turn around and leave, probably to return later the same evening. Once she starts laying eggs, she can’t stop. If something startles her, she’ll run to the water, dropping the potential babies along the way. None of them will survive. That’s only happened to me once in seven years and I don’t want it to happen again.”

           The exact term he used to describe that experience was “an abortion.”

           After the short boat ride, my daughter and I walked in the dark, on either side of our new friend. The only sounds were occasional waves lapping onto the beach, and slight movements of feet shifting in the sand.

           Within minutes, Hazel stumbled and fell to the ground.

           “Are you okay?” we asked in unison, as we picked her up and helped dust off the wet dirt.

           “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

           We kept going.

           The night before, there had been twenty sightings. This night, two other groups were also on the hunt. Our guide’s first find was turtle tracks. Then nothing. Forty-five minutes later, our turtle appeared.

           She was huge--several feet long and probably weighing over a hundred pounds. The guide lifted her back flipper and shined the flashlight on the nest. We watched the eggs exit her body—lubrication first, then plunk, plunk, plunk. Four or five in a row. Then several singles. Watching that miracle for several minutes was a highlight of my life. My daughter’s too.

            When we returned to the dock, well after 11:00 p.m., Harold was still there, as promised. He’d waited in the dark alone, pacing back and forth, scared something would happen to her.

           Again the next morning, the four of us breakfasted together. Hazel was proud of herself for going on the tour without him. She chattered about the experience as we ate.

           “Did you know,” she said, “green sea turtles are the largest hard-shelled sea turtles and can grow to between three and four feet, weighing 300 to 700 pounds? Out of about 120 eggs, only one baby is likely to survive to adulthood. I couldn’t sleep last night because I was so excited. I looked it up in a book I found in our room. And if you hadn’t invited me, it never would have occurred to me to go without him. I would have missed one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.”

           As she and her husband left the table, off to new experiences elsewhere in Costa Rica, she turned to me and said: “You tell those women you work with not to let anything stop them from doing what they want, with or without their husbands.”

            Her story became one of my favorite tales to tell my college classes.

           And my favorite Christmas present from my daughter that year? A silver turtle pin with multicolored markings on its back.