By: Savanah Eve Stewart, age 12
The baby sea turtles did not come like I expected them to on August 3, 2008. My mom said it was just like having a baby; you must be patient and wait until the time is right. Believe me I sure did have to be patient and wait!
My brother and his girlfriend Alie went to the nest on August 3rd, 4th, and 5th. My mom and I got to Gulf Shores on August 6th. Every night around 6:45 we went to sit with the Bon Secour NWR people. We spread a blanket out and lay there in the cool sand waiting, watching and wondering. On August 7th a lady named Kate Curl was listening to the nest with a stethoscope. She was very excited because she could hear swooshing sounds coming from the nest. I got to listen with the stethoscope to hear what it sounded like for myself. It was pretty amazing. I got really excited thinking they were going to hatch that night. Around 11:00 pm the nest got quiet and Ms. Kate said they had settled down for the night. On August 8th and 9th the evenings were pretty much the same. I was beginning to think they would never come. I was afraid we would have to leave and go home and I would miss seeing them hatch.
Even though the waiting was really long and hard I met some nice and interesting people. I also had the chance to ask them some questions about working with the Bon Secour NWR. This is my favorite answer to the following question… “Why do you do this job every day?” Ms. Joan Durand said, “I feel very blessed to be here so I feel like should give back to our world.” I understand completely how she feels. Now that I know how threatened the sea turtles are it is my job to tell my friends and others what they can do to help.
When we arrived at the nest on Sunday evening around 6:45 it seemed like another night was going to pass by without the nest hatching. We spread our blanket out and sat silently waiting. The NWR people listened carefully to the nest every 30 minutes. They said they could hear swooshing and cascading sounds. At 9pm Ms. Kate called the director of the NWR and he said that he was coming to personally check on the nest. They were afraid that the babies were trapped.
When Mr. Reynolds got there he listened very carefully. He made the decision to softly tap on the sand where the nest was. Suddenly the sand caved in and all of these little baby sea turtles came bubbling out. My mom ran down the beach where Joshua was fishing along the shoreline. She yelled, “Hurry, the babies are coming out!” When she got back to the nest Mr. Reynolds wanted to know the where the young lady writing for the Opelika-Auburn News was. I excitedly went up and introduced myself, my mom, my brother and Alie. Mr. Reynolds handed us surgical gloves and told us to be ready to help the sea turtles down the trench and to the water. We all crawled on our knees beside the trench to help. One little one kept turning around and heading the wrong direction. I picked him up several times and turned him towards the water. After about 7 times of turning him around he became very still. I thought something was wrong. Mr. Reynolds told me that he was exhausted from trying to come out of the nest for the past 5 days. Since I now knew that he was exhausted I picked him up and carried him to the water’s edge. As soon as I picked him up he started squirming frantically. At the ends of his flippers they were pointy and sticking my hands. It didn’t hurt at all because he was so tiny. The minute he hit the water he disappeared just like his brother’s and sister’s.
We thought that only 84 hatched that night. 72 hours later the Bon Secour NWR people went back to excavate the nest. The official count for the night of August 10th was actually 94 that made it to the water. They found one live, very active one left in the nest. They helped him to the water. There were 30 unfertilized eggs and 4 embryos that did not make it. So all together 95 baby sea turtles are now swimming in the ocean.
This was the most incredible experience of my life. Next year my family plans on volunteering. I hope that others have learned from this awesome experience. I feel that I am a better person for learning and sharing this with others.
If you would like to adopt a nest please go to alabamaseaturtles.com.
C.L.A.C.
By: Olivia White
This summer I attended a camp called C.L.A.C. (College of Liberal Arts Camp) It was the best camp ever!! I loved it. It was on the Auburn University campus and I stayed in a dorm for 3 days. I felt like I got the full college experience. We walked everywhere and where we couldn’t walk, we rode a bus. We had to carry our backpacks around campus and ate at the cafeteria. Inside our backpacks were the essentials like markers, crayons, pens and water bottles. We were like one huge family for 3 whole days. I did have a roommate and our bathroom was connected to another room with 2 more people in it.
On Sunday we got there and after getting to know people we set off for lunch. After lunch we went to the arboretum and used an art technique called frottage. With every class we had, we had a project. For example, we met with Dr. Green, the Dean of Students at Auburn University, he was really cool. Our project for that class was to take notes. But that was on Tuesday, so I’ll get to that later. After the arboretum we took a tour of the AU library. We didn’t take a regular tour though, we were chosen a group and then we were chosen a certain floor of that library and we had to ‘explore’ that floor. I got the first floor. It was amazing! After the library we went to eat dinner. Then we walked to a field to play games and then our day was over. It was 9:00 pm and time for our day camp friends to go home while we went and showered, put on our pj’s, etc. Then it was lights out for the night at 11:00.
At 6:30 in the morning by our camp counselor woke us up by banging on the door. We got up, got ready and set out for breakfast after the day campers had arrived again. After breakfast we went to the bus station so we could hitch a ride to the Jule Collins Museum of Art. It was very neat. We learned a lot about the art there. Then we went our separate ways to either clay or theater. We got to choose the day before which class we were going to take. I chose clay for my class so off we went. After the long bus ride of singing Hannah Montana songs we got to the clay studio. We played with clay, but we still had our project to do and so we wet our hands and then made a huge handprint in the center of our paper. After it dried we would have to describe it and how it felt. Then we went to lunch and then walked to the Haley Center were we were taught Spanish by Ms.Lulu. We learned a bunch of Spanish within those 2 hours. Then we went to dinner and did the exact same thing that happened on Sunday except when we went to the field we worked on our closing reception, but then we played games. Then it was lights out and we eagerly waited for the next day to come and for Ms. Symphony to pound on our door again.
Then that day came that we eagerly waited for, Tuesday, the last day of camp, we were excited, but dreading it. We woke up at 6:30 again and went to breakfast. We went to Haley Center again to go to Photo Shop. This class was amazing! We deformed our own photos! It was so much fun. After photo shop we went to see Dr. Green. He was just like I said before… really cool. He talked to us about how important it was to go to college. Then as Dr. Green left, in came the international students. We met 2 students. They both were from India. It was really neat. They showed us their own language. Then we went to lunch and were late but we got in anyway. After lunch we went to Spanish class again. After Spanish class we went to dinner and then we went to the theater were we had our closing program. Then we went back to the dorm and packed our bags and left. It was officially the end of camp.
C.L.A.C. was so much fun. I hope by this article that you can tell. It was so inspirational and so much fun that I would say yes to go back in a heartbeat. It was an incredible experience that will last a million years because we did such a variety of things in only 3 days. As you can tell, the things that we did in this camp range from learning Spanish to photo shop. I love this camp and I hope one day either you or your children will get to experience C.L.A.C.
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