Journey to the Sea: A story by Maeve and Zaylie

Journey to the Sea

by Maeve and Zaylie

Once upon a time there was a mother turtle that was waddling up a beach called Playa Ostional.Finally she thought she found the right place to lay her eggs so she stopped and started digging her nest. She was exhausted but she kept digging. After a while, she decided that it was deep enough. So she laid her 100 eggs. She used the sand around her to bury her eggs back up .then she started her long journey back to the ocean.

Sixty days later, the first turtle of that same nest poked his head out of the ground and breathed in the fresh air. He started digging his way up to the light. Just as he was about to climb out and say “Phew” to himself, something poked his butt. He looked down and saw another little head poking out. When that head finally came out, she was really clumsy and knocked his brother back down. Then, he finally flapped his flipper onto his sister’s head and pushed himself onto firm ground.

When he looked up he saw lots of round thingamajigs staring down on him and making screeching noises. Then he thought to himself, “What are those things?” He wasn’t sure if they were dangerous or not but he figured he better be on the safe side and not just leap into their arms. Somehow he knew what arms were.  He knew he had to get to that big, blue, glinty, sparkly, wet thing. So off he went.

It turned out that those two-legged things that made screeching noises were actually helping him. He realized that they were chasing away the soft black feathered, wrinkled bald fierce creatures that had long sharp things sticking out of their faces that didn’t look so promising. Also, they used their spindly flippers to clear away a path to the blue thing. They are really strong because they can knock down the mountains and fill in the craters. Those were big obstacles for the baby turtle. They missed one of them and he fell into one of the craters! He fell on his back. Then the most exciting thing in the whole of his short life happened. One of the two legged creatures came along and picked him up out of the crater and put him on his belly on the flat space again.

When the sky got a little lighter, the baby turtle saw what turned out to be a crab. It was oval shaped with long pointy claw-like legs that waved about. It walked sideways for heavens sake! It came towards  over the hole to cover it. He loves, loves, loves those two-leggeds! Otherwise, he might have lost his head.

Finally, he was really, really close to the sparkly blue thing. Then suddenly, one of the big, tumbly, crashy things that turn white and come from the blue thing came toward him. It slowed down a bit when it came toward him but it covered over him. It tumbled over him but then it was so gentle when it came toward him that he let go. He had to adjust to using his flippers to swim instead of propel him along the sand. It was awesome and scary at the same time! But he felt ready for this next adventure. Would the two leggeds join him?

The End

Notes: On her blog, Zaylie’s mom Patti wrote about her experience with our turtle patrol. You can read it here. By the way, the two-leggeds in this story are us, Maeve and Zaylie. The mother turtles dig by curling their flippers up just like we curl our hands up and dig the sand up in the same kind of motion that we use, scooping and throwing. The front flippers clear away and the back flippers go into the hole and scoop out the sand. The bald feathered creatures are vultures. There are many mysteries about sea turtles that even scientists don’t know yet (like what they do for most of the time in the water, where they go, how they mate etc.)