Circle of Life...

It's been several years since the last time we drove to watch this phenomenon of nature!! Wake up everybody!!! It's o'dark thirty, and time to hit the road!!! Bud and I got up early on Sunday morning, I first got on the phone and called the hot line. The time was here. It was shortly before 5 a.m. and it's about a 30-40 minute drive from home; must get dressed and head on down the road. In the dark hour of the morning just before sunrise. The drive is over the causeway to North Padre Island. After crossing the causeway from downtown for about 15 miles or so, there is a small settlement of hotels and resorts, homes, and businesses all incorporated within the Corpus Christi city limits zone. Driving beyond that on Park Highway 22, you can drive for another 15 miles or so and you reach the end of the paved highway. From there it's all 4 wheel driving on the beach for approximately 60/70 miles to the man-made channel that separates North Padre Island and South Padre Island near Brownsville, Texas.

Okay, we got the directions straight, I'll move on. Getting to the end of the paved road, there is Malaquite Beach [pronounced MAL ah keet]. This is an area with a visitor's center for the Padre Island National Seashore Federal Park. Miles of beach, that is uninhabited, pristine and filled with wildlife of all sorts. At the Malaquite Center there is also a huge facility that incubates the endangered turtle eggs found along the sandy shores to save them. Once they hatch, they're ready for releasing into the Gulf. Hundreds upon thousands of eggs are hatched here [each year!], and if you follow the dates and call ahead to their hot line, you are then told when to show up to experience the bitter sweet journey of the hatchlings released into the wild. I say bitter sweet because it's a happy time and a sad time...they're free...yet, how many but just a few will survive the cruelties of life on their own? They're fish bait, they're so very vulnerable to the predators of the sea and nature's malice. We got up, drove to the island, went through the park entrance gate [fees are waived on release dates just prior to the release time around 6:15 a.m.]. At this early early hour on a Sunday morning, the parking lot was filled with vehicles!! And getting up to the center, the people of all ages are already here!!! From the center pavilion, the trek is down hill over a fence lined boardwalk, off the dunes and down to the beach. The area on the beach is set up for the turtle protection...netting high above to keep the sea gulls from snatching up the hatchlings, the volunteers are lined up with bright flags with colorful streamers for 'scare tactics' of their natural predators:  And we human spectators by the hundreds form a fence surrounding the vast area cordoned off by 'cautionary tape', for protection also.  A HUMAN FENCE as seen partially in the photos below.

...and the styrofoam coolers are opened and with gloved hands the baby turtles are placed on the sandy surface and the 'race is on'....their small flippers push the sand as they head for the Gulf!!! No more needs to be said: Just follow their lead and see that you'll probably feel what I feel as I watch them head out to a life unknown...

Farewell sweet princess!!  Parting is such sweet sorrow. May flights of angels protect thee.  Hope you survive and live a long happy life!! And maybe someday, when mature, you'll return here to share your fruitful times with more fertile eggs so we can see your offspring return safely to the deep...

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done

There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love

Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

Lyrics from Lion King
words by Elton John


ADDENDUM: 11:00 am July 6th

Life History and Reproduction: Nearly 95% of worldwide Kemp's ridley nesting occurs in one confirmed arribada ("arrival") in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. A small amount of females nest consistently in Veracruz, Mexico, and at Padre Island National Seashore, Texas. Sexual maturity is estimated to be 7 to 15 years of age. Female Kemp's ridleys return to nest on the same beach where they were hatched (from May to July) — usually in the daylight hours — to lay two to three clutches of approximately 100 eggs, which incubate for 50-60 days. Upon emerging from the buried nest, hatchlings weigh roughly half an ounce (14 g) and measure around 1.5 inches (3.8 cm).   Read more on the turtles here...