You Must Confront Vader

Some of you know my history with the amazing phenomenon known simply as Turtle Style. If you are not acquainted, I highly suggest you make yourself so. Fully embracing the energy-saving, cold-blooded lifestyle ("The Slow Movement"), even for brief periods of time, can be quite fulfilling. I got a whole new perspective on all of that today, as I was finally allowed to hang out with some of our turtle buddies here.

This morning Gary and I were summoned to help dig the grave of a sea turtle that had recently died on Turtle Beach, where a lot of the sea turtles in the area go to hang out, for reasons no one can know or understand. There are a lot of perfectly good beaches here, but they are really into that one area. Anyways. So we get there and find a big, bloated dead one next to the seaplane ramp, and also find one turned upside down that was being washed in by the surf. It was like turtle genocide out there, pretty disturbing you know?

I walked over to the overturned one to see if it was really dead.....although they are kind of screwed if they find themselves stuck upside down (they weigh hundreds of pounds), they are Strong and can hold on for quite some time. It seemed to weakly wave a flipper at me, like beckoning me closer to hear its last dying wish. "Vader", it hoarsely whispered. "You must confront Vader. Then, and only then, a Jedi will you be."

What? I think that must have happened to someone else. Anyway, I grabbed a hold of a flipper, and it kind of tugged at me a bit, so I got everyone to come help flip it over. It swam away immediately after.....I didnt know they could move so fast.




Greg was taking some measurements before gravedigging commenced. Its measurements were Big, Heavy and Dead.

Gary and I got out of actually digging the hole for this dude, due to marine debris commitments. We heard it didnt go well. Maybe if they just piled sand on top of it, it couldve worked, but that would have just looked ridiculous.

Otherwise, things are good. Im listening to Dillinger Four right now, rejoicing in the fact that I was able to buy a bottle of Jack and a case of Miller tonight. You dont take these things for granted on Midway. I saw a couple Brown Noddies this afternoon, which were pretty sweet (Black Noddies are the common noddy right now). A White Tern appears to be sitting on an egg outside our back door, and all our yardatross chicks seem to be doing well, including the one with the malfunctioning eye. Life goes on.



This is our dead buddy. It had been there a few days. Weekends can be hard on reptiles too, I guess.



For the living turtles, life goes on. Slowly.