After spending the morning learning how to did turtle egg holes, and relaxing in the hammocks for a while, we did a bit of a beach clean-up. Dugan and I spent a good 15 minutes trying to get this thing that looked like a fender made of really thin metal and then crinkled up, lots of bottles and plastic bags, including one filled with something liquidy and/or squishy that we decided should not be dug up. Victoria found what looked to be a smooth white rock and called us over. It was the head of a green turtle.
The turtle hadn’t been dead long, so as Dugan said, it smelled bad but not that bad. The eyes hadn’t yet sunken in, and it didn’t look like anything had nibbled on it much. There appeared to be a clean cut at the base of the skull, but the neck skin looked torn, and there are sharks around, so we weren’t sure what happened to it.
We took the surprisingly heavy head back to the kiosk, and Vicki asked us to bury the head and to tell Joshua where it was so he could dig up the skull later. The first hole we dug was too close to two protected nests we hadn’t noticed. Kara was worried about dogs coming around, attracted to the rotting things smell of the head, and then transferring their attention to the even nummier snack bar that is a turtle nest. So, we dug another hole and buried the head there.
I thought about running back to the house to grab my camera and take a picture. But that seemed somehow wrong. I guess in the right hands a picture like that would be an indictment of poaching or sharks or dying turtles, but it felt it would just become an oddity, a hey look at this!, and it seemed the turtle deserved more.
