The painted turtle experience
Wednesday July 1, 2009
One night in Ludington, we decided to take the kids down and build a campfire for s’mores after dinner. Dan was reluctant to go fishing and leave me to this task alone. I think he was having flashbacks to my previous ‘camping’ failure. After much reassurance that I could handle it, he left to go find some fish.
Now, I can do a lot of things and if need be, I’m sure I could have figured out how to make s’mores happen but Dan’s parents were still there and I was hopeful that they could help me. We headed down to the lake where the bonfire site is located.
Mom & Dad are obviously pro at making a fire, they went to work and with their teamwork, they had one going in no time. I spent my time gathering logs (lesson learned… not trees) and s’more sticks. Then I started taking pictures. The kids had found a turtle that was digging a hole to lay it’s eggs. We all gathered around her and watched as she dug deeper and deeper.
“Isn’t that hole deep enough, Aunt Chris?” Claire asked me.
I didn’t know, hon… I’ve never dug a hole to have my babies in.
We all thought it was neat we got to watch her and sat back down by the fire, waiting for it to get to marsh mellow roasting hot. Well, all of us except for Emma. She was intrigued by what the turtle was doing and continued to watch alone. A little while later she yelled to me that the turtle had laid 2 eggs! We all scampered back up the hill to look and see.
Sure enough, there was 2 eggs in there. She continued to lay them and ended at 8. It was pretty cool to see that. None of us had ever watched a turtle laying it’s eggs. And it was fun to hear Emma tell us everything she knew about this process.
The mommy lays the eggs in the hole and goes back to the water, then the babies come out and they go to the water without even a grown up!
Gerrit, Sam, Claire & Emma looking at the turtle digging it’s hole
Can you see the turtle eggs?
Grandpa B teaching Emma how to roast a proper marsh mellow
Gerrit eating his s’more and looking so snuggable in his sweats
That’s cool that they got to see the turtle lay her eggs….my child (Ozzy) likes to dig turtle eggs up and eat them – yuck! He does this all the time at the cottage – lol!