My Narrative: The Story Of Turtle Eggs

The flexible, calcified layer was slowly tearing at one point producing the sound of thick paper being shredded and my attention was transfixed. I couldn’t believe it was finally happening and I was completely mesmerized by this for forty five minutes. Gradually, a tiny little hawk shaped head popped out of the shell peering at me with big, curious eyes. The baby snapping turtle’s face was full of mischief and excitement. Her eyes were big and dark, like little inkblots, and her ancient looking face reminded me of baby dinosaurs. I wondered if baby dinosaurs could have been as adorable as this little one. I was surprised to see her pig like nostrils but it brought a goofy character to her and made me smile. Her skin was black, leathery and wrinkled up into long horizontal layers. I was so spellbound by this little creature that I had lost a sense of reality and noticed that I had been by the eggs for more than an hour. The happiness I felt that morning was indescribable, even though only one hatchling was emerging out of the nineteen, which were still in their protected homes. In June of this year, I had been very lucky to obtain a bucket filled with twenty two snapping turtle eggs rescued during a construction work, by a friend and since he couldn’t commit enough time to hatch them, he begged me to take on the responsibility. My instant reaction of course, was excitement and enthusiasm to incubate these eggs and so I immediately took them in. My first task was to replicate a good nesting atmosphere in a container. I began my research on snapping turtle incubation. Snapping turtles are the largest fresh water turtles in the US and our modern snapping turtles are 40 million years old. Their ancestors have been around for 215 million years, through the Triassic period and these turtles even today, haven’t changed much in their appearance. All my reading up, finally led me to discover that I didn’t even need an incubator since it was warm enough during the summer for these eggs to stabilize their temperature, which is usually around the high 70s or low 80s. I learned that I needed to have a layer of peat moss first in my plastic container, which retains moisture that was important to keep the egg shells from drying out. After placing the moss I put a layer of soil and onto which I buried the eggs partially so that they could still breathe. This is when my long waiting period began, since snapping turtle eggs take three to four months to hatch. Right after setting them up, was when all my fears, thoughts and doubts came rushing into my head. I felt a tingly sensation in my stomach for days and I began panicking about everything I could possibly think of. Had I set up the container right? What if I hadn’t and I ended up killing them all? As this was my first time attempting something so delicate of a task, I began wondering if this was even ethical. This is usually a process so precisely manufactured by the mother turtle, where she lays the eggs in a specific type of habitat, with the exact amount of moisture and temperature, something impossible for me to acutely recreate as it is so complex and due to my utter lack of knowledge in hatching turtles. The ethics of wildlife is a controversial one where some feel that we should interfere and help the natural cycles at times, while others feel that animals dying cruel deaths or getting eaten, are a part of nature so “let things take their natural course.” I felt conflicted, should I just burry them by a swamp and leave them for nature’s ways or should I care for them? Leopold wrote in his book, “A Sand County Almanac”, "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." He clearly states that we need to include nature within our community but I wondered whether he meant, be aware and respect them or would an act of incubating eggs out of their natural habitat fall under his spectrum of

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