Turtles All The Way Up

When one thinks of a turtle, it’s usually in the context of slowness, gentleness and maybe even old age or wisdom. Resilience and firm determination may not fall into the immediate, initial key-words that one associates with a turtle. Turtles are usually the animals reserved for fables on life lessons such as “slow and steady wins the race” or “travel at your own pace”, maybe even “swim with the current” or “enjoy your long and arduous journey” — if you’re thinking of a leatherback turtle that instinctively navigates hundreds of miles back to its birthplace to mate or lay eggs.

However, faced with adversity from the moment they are born, turtles live an admirable and solitary life. And they have a lot to offer us if we pay a little more attention to their lives, natural instincts and behaviour.

Two years ago I had my mind completely altered in the way it viewed turtles on the whole, and it was all because of one turtle I met — Sammy the Loggerhead Turtle.

I, like many other people, never really thought to associate turtles as being emotive or having the capacity for a unique personality like some other animals (particularly mammals like dogs or cats). However, not only did Sammy display clear identifying characteristics and personality traits, she displayed something far more laudable — an unyielding resolve in the face of her tribulations.

Sammy was a lost and confused loggerhead turtle that washed up on a beach in Trinidad, almost 2,000 miles away from where loggerheads are normally found (the waters of the Florida Keys). She was affectionately named “Sammy”, after sea turtle conservationist Dennis Sammy, who found her stranded and minimally responsive on the shore of Manzanilla Beach. Sammy was unable to stay submerged when she attempted to dive into water for food; she could only float on the ocean’s surface with an obvious right-sided tilt, she was not eating on her own and was passing no faeces.

The vets who treated Sammy determined that the culprit for her inability to dive underwater for food was that she had an air pocket in her stomach which was caused by not eating. Thus she was trapped in a Mobius strip of not being able to eat because she can’t dive to hunt for food and then not being able to stay underwater because of the air pocket she has from not being able to eat.

She was sent to the El Socorro Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Freeport, Trinidad, to be force fed by caretakers in an attempt to remove the air pocket. The plan was to start the process of feeding for around 3 months and then have her sent to a specialist hospital in Miami where she would undergo treatment for around a year until she could be fully rehabilitated and sent back into the ocean.

A social media post was made requesting volunteers to help feed Sammy the turtle, in an attempt to give her a new lease on life. Loggerheads are huge turtles — up to 170 lbs on average — and Sammy was to be fed using a contraption sort of like a crane which would keep her body at a 45 degree angle while her mouth is held open by volunteers and then food is syringed down into her throat.

On seeing the post, and the picture of Sammy, I thought — why not? It was during my vacation period from school and I figured what better way to spend my free time than giving a turtle a second chance at life. After all, up to this moment, I’d thought of turtles as gentle, amiable and helpless creatures.

When I first saw Sammy, it was indeed sad and pitiful sight. She was slumped over, muscles limp and barely making much of a mere effort to swim around in her small makeshift pool at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. Her eyes had a look that I’d recognized before only in the candid expressions of strangers who thought no one was paying attention or in that small moment when you happen to lock eyes with someone at a funeral — pure and unfiltered despondence. It was the first time I witnessed a turtle — or any animal — showing clear signs of depression.

Then it struck me — Sammy didn’t stop eating because she was physically obstructed from doing so, she stopped eating because something must have happened to make her feel so sad and so dejected that she no longer felt the desire to eat anymore, or to hunt, swim or do any of things that encompass the natural instinctive behaviour of a healthy turtle. She had lost her will to live.

Sadness is a universal emotion that can be felt by any living being; it’s quite possibly one of the main requirements for having a soul. As one of my personal favourite authors, Fyodor Dostoevsky once proclaimed, “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.” It was then made clear to me that turtles have the emotional range to feel such deep sadness because they have the intelligence and sentience required to process life in a multidimensional way just as us as humans do. I was determined to stay by her side through her journey to recovery.

Sammy single-handedly taught me a lot about turtles in the little over a month that we spent time together. The first thing I noticed about her was the range of emotions she was able to display that I hadn’t known to associate with turtles before.

The first day I fed her, she was angry and untrusting of me, and clearly did not enjoy the process of being force fed a fish paste through a syringe. She kept attempting to retract her head and neck into her shell to avoid the whole process altogether. I had to keep a firm grip on her head to keep her neck straight so she could be fed. We locked eyes a couple times during the feeding session which lasted a little less than an hour and I could see it — she was lost in her own private world of pain and anger.

Surprisingly, as soon as she was done being force fed and set back into a tank of water she exhibited a clear change in behaviour. She almost immediately seemed more cheerful and would even swim around and make small attempts to dive. It was a beautiful change to witness.

By just the third day of me working with her, she became more trusting and would even stretch her neck out to be fed. We would lock eyes and I would see something new — hope. Sammy was disarming herself and letting us help her. She had made a conscious decision to get better. She also seemed to recognize me. I felt a small, but very real, connection with this wild loggerhead turtle that I hadn’t even felt with other people before.

Sammy allowed herself to be vulnerable with her caretakers. Some people go their whole lives and never experience a moment of vulnerability or feel the comfort that comes with letting your walls down and letting others in. It seems you need a lot of courage to enter into others, to really connect with them. As humans we all tend to think that everyone else lives in fortresses and so in turn we do too. But in fact, we inhabit much more delicate structures, and if you’re honest and open enough you can slip right into the mind of another. Often times we don’t because we’re too scared of the vulnerability that comes with that kind of intimacy, and too committed to the masks we wear for the world. But I always think there is no one in the world that you cannot connect with, even just a little bit, even for a small moment, because we’re all in this life experience together.

So here I was experiencing this with the unlikeliest of sources — a turtle! In many ways, Sammy was teaching me an important lesson in vulnerability and connection. It’s exhausting always being on guard and by doing so we miss out on something bigger by hiding the more human sides of ourselves from each other. I believe part of what makes us human is that bit of vulnerability we try so hard to protect. When we acknowledge that everyone — even turtles — has it, maybe that would bridge the gap easier and facilitate deeper and more meaningful connections.

As time went by, my connection with Sammy the loggerhead turtle deepened to the point where I was quietly praying for her recovery in my heart’s most intimate moments before bed. I needed her to get better. I was invested now because she represented a dignified resolve to overcome affliction and dolour. If Sammy could do it, then anyone can.

As mentioned before, Sammy was a turtle full of surprises, and in just 10 weeks, she was fully rehabilitated and ready to be released back into the ocean — no special surgery needed. She would be released at the same beach she washed up on and have a tracking device attached to her shell so we would know that she was always safe. She was also tagged as official property of Trinidad and Tobago so if she was ever to wash up on another shore, veterinarians would know she’s a protected turtle. This was the first rehabilitation case of its kind for Trinidad and Tobago.

Sammy left Trinidad and was back in the big blue ocean but her many lessons remained forever in my heart. This unsuspecting loggerhead turtle was able to show me what fierce determination looked like, and taught me that when you feel lost, rely on your own sense of direction and resolve.

Turtles are a species that have left me enchanted and completely enamoured of their innate ability to overcome any difficulty while remaining gentle and trusting of life. They swim with the currents, do things at their own pace, keep a hard shell, enjoy their time alone and most importantly — never give up.

The purpose of World Turtle Day, May 23, sponsored yearly since 2000 by American Tortoise Rescue, is to bring attention to, and increase knowledge of and respect for, turtles and tortoises, and encourage human action to help them survive and thrive.

I hope my recounting of my personal experience with a turtle that earned my love and respect will do the same for you — the reader — and we can continue to be encouraged to help turtles thrive on this earth. After all, who knows what other life lessons they’re waiting to teach us.