Starving Muskrats in Jersey

 She began crying at her cash register.  My fault, of course.  My shopping companion probably thought she was nuts, but I understood.  I understood completely, and from personal experience.  Except it was not ME who was crying over turtles.  I cry over dog-related conversations, specifically when we talk about puppies that were born to my dogs.  It engages every part of my soul, and my eyes get "notified" and then I start to tear-up, and it's all downhill from there.  But her story was more interesting.  Until it got gross.

It started with a simple question:  "Are you about ready to get off your shift today?"  (If you shop with ME, prepare yourself for conversations with cashiers and other people standing in line.)  The cashier was in her mid-40's I think.  She stated, "I became a gramma today."  I said, rather cautiously because I caught an odd vibe, "Congratulations.  It is congratulations, right?"  She smirked.  She replied, "turtles.  60 baby turtles."  Cool.  Tell me more ...

Her boyfriend works under a bridge somewhere on the Jersey Shore and found turtle eggs.  So he was concerned that the muskrats would eat them.  So he brought home the terrapin eggs.  All of them, I guess.  She tilted her cell phone towards me and I saw the little turtle head sticking out of the egg.  He paddled a bit, and then he SHOT OUT of that egg like a rocket.  A very small rocket, but a rocket nonetheless.

I shared with her the first Terrapin Turtle story I heard in Jersey over a decade ago:  one of the seaside conservation groups collected - or I believe they call it "rescued" - turtle eggs and hatched them at their facility.  The day that they planned to launch them into the salt marsh, they had planned quite a to-do event.  The news media was invited.  The local kindergarten class was invited.  They all gathered at the dock preparing for the Great Jersey Turtle Launch.  Except for one thing:  someone forgot about the seagull colony that was situated on that same marsh.  When they launched the little turtles, those bad-birds came down on that operation for Turtle Potato Chips!  The media did not get the story they wanted.  No one likes to see kindergarteners wailing and crying over a turtle massacre.  Heck, if I was there I probably would cry too.

The cashier smiled.  Then she told me what she fed the turtles.  As my friend LL in my former office at the hospital would say, "Wuuuhhh," as she turned green.  She said, "I feed them roley polies."  If you don't know what that is, do NOT look it up.  They are kind of like the white cut worms that kill your grass from the roots up.  Then she added, like it was worse, "But I can't feed the bigger turtles crickets, I make my boyfriend do that."  Lucky him.

Truly I think it was the most interesting story of the whole vacation which overall was fine, just not very eventful.  Maybe it's better that way.  The only wailing I saw on vacation was the eight year old girl wailing hysterically at her mother:  "I DON'T WANT TO GO IN THE WATER!  IT'S SCARY!  IT'S SCARY!"  The mother said, rather matter-of-factly, "Your father said he'd help you in beyond the waves."  Clearly the mother was in a sun-stroke-induced trance of Idiocy.  I was looking at those waves.  Perhaps you could get out into them, but all bets were off as far as an Unscathed-Return-to-Shore goes.  The waves were pummeling full grown adults into the sand as they tried to crawl back to shore.  (And then, to add Insult to Injury, it dumped salty sand down the back of some people's suits, oh so uncomfortable.)  I am usually pretty brave as far as "jumping waves" goes, but I saw that getting out may produce varying results.  I wasn't feeling like I was 27 years old again, so I just didn't do it.  That little girl didn't want to either.  As far as her mother ... I bet she'd feel differently if her husband picked her up out of her shore chair and dumped her into the Atlantic.  Somehow I think Child Protective Services would agree with me.  When a kid tells you, "NO!  IT'S SCARY!" I think we need to honor that.