Fw: Frosty Moon Casts Light on Second Chance

[Marguerite Whilden]

Marguerite Whilden

November 5, 2006 at 2:23 pm #24241

Attachments : I thought you might be interested in this “second chance” story from Don Lewis, Cape Cod. Save those eggs! Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 11:05 AM Subject: Frosty Moon Casts Light on Second Chance Friends and colleagues, Time for a little, unexpected good news to intrude amidst the press of “things that must be done” and the busy-ness of driving through in-boxes and deadlines. To turn on its head the famous Forrest Gump phrase about the unfortunate, brown circumstances one discovers on the roadways of life, sometimes miracles happen, too. It’s 28 degrees outside under a November full moon aptly nicknamed the Frosty Moon. And, yes, they’re cold-blooded, but not frozen-blooded. As we’ve learned through a lot of years of turtle studies, you can never give up on these critters … either as a species or as an individual. My colleague and friend Margie Whilden of Maryland tells a story about a “dead” hatchling who was set aside in a plastic baggie after being excavated from a completed nest, only to snap back to life weeks later when plopped in a container of warm water. Premiere turtle expert and friend Bob Prescott regales audiences with the tale of a sea turtle pronounced dead by an ER doctor, only to be found romping through the Sanctuary and over-turning furniture the next morning. So, we’ve learned to set hubris aside and proceed on the principle that we don’t really know the limits of their endurance or their resilience. In other words, never give up. During the field season, we encounter nests which have been partially depredated or hatched nests in which an egg or two appears desiccated or infertile. In many research programs, such eggs are counted and discarded; in others, they are opened to assess the state of un-development. We decided to take a slightly different tack in accordance with our never-give-up slogan. We have a “second chance” container filled with moist sand into which eggs of varying degrees of un-development are buried. Some of them, actually most of them, look awfully bad … discolored, dimpled, misshapened. Not your typical white, pristine ovoid. Here we are in early November and their cohorts have hatched months ago. Yet, to our surprise … and each year it still is a wonderful surprise, when we searched the second chance bin this evening, we discovered three beautiful and perfectly normal terrapin hatchlings waiting to greet the world. One was fully emerged (see attached snapshot) and the other two were pipped, egg tooth gone, and still hiding in their protective egg shells. Three babies who now have a chance to join their siblings next spring to help restore the threatened terrapin population of coastal Massachusetts. Three babies who give us a second chance to restore balance within the fragile salt marsh habitat of coastal Massachusetts. A tiny miracle, literally and figuratively, but an exceedingly bright one to mirror the Frosty Moon shining up above.

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