Critters

Yesterday morning we crossed the street to the beach to look for turtles. The dogs stayed home, thank heaven as we had passed two hotels and suddenly were surrounded by babies making a run for the ocean. We collected so many that the normal paint can the officials use wouldn't have workd. We put them in a small depression and called one of the beach cleaners to see if he could find someone to take care of them. He and a maid from the hotel came out with a bin and we kept putting the little guys in the bin as they kept trying to climb out. The beach cleaner found what looked like any other small pile of sand on the beach and started digging. The maid pitched in and we were trying to figure out what they were doing when they pulled out some more babies. Robert and I helped dig some more, pulling up fresh babies and stopped when we got to the newly hatched eggs.
I have changed my attitude as I now know
that they are taken to a beach in the north and released in the evening so the birds don't get

them. We found two, later, who had made a long trek of about a city block to get to the ocean from their nest in front of a hotel. Two big, burly American guys asked to see the babies and were pretty excited about the whole thing. We were pretty thrilled about the whole thing ourselves.

It would be a pretty jaded person who wouldn't be moved by an inexplicable miracle of life. The instinct of the mothers to return to the beach where they were born, to the babies who had just hatched and were beginning the cycle all over again is inexplicable. I just hope that launching the babies from another beach doesn't mess up whatever is hardwired into their brains as to where they are supposed to return in their future.

Koa is being pretty protective of Sha'ash lately as he has a hurt leg hurt hip...we are not sure. We took him to the vet who took an x-ray that showed little, and said German Shedders are subject to displaysia. He limps a lot, but doesn't seem to be in pain and we are hoping that the meds will help him. What is strange is that Koa now sits with him below and above deck. Another inexplicable animal intention.