Last Friday, while you were all wondering through a farm in the morning, I too visited two gardens. My mother started gardening to a larger extent with a friend and so I wandered out with her early in the morning to help pick tomatoes. We also visited another friend’s garden where we picked red raspberries. I was away when the event of the day started though. When I returned, there was quite a buzz. Baby snapping turtles were crawling out of the ground, making their attempt at life. My mothers friend began to collect them. almost 30 all together. She made phone calls and asked what the best thing to do with them was. There is not my areas of water close by and it is possible, as the phone calls confirmed, that not all of them will make it. The friend transported them, though slightly illegal to a place more worthy for a turtle life. As this class ends, i’ve found that it is still difficult to answer questions about our involvement. Because we have the ability to help an animal out, assist it in its survival, should we? Turtles lay many eggs because it is highly possibly that many of them may not survive. What if we save too many? Where does our involvement enter into a kind of management?
cute, aren’t they?
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September 23, 2009 at 3:42 pm |
A good point. I think to some extent we should help them if they are in danger because of a human-caused problem, but perhaps leave them alone if they are going to die because of a “natural” (sorry, taboo word, I know) cause. On Planet Earth the camera crew was filming baby penguins in a blizzard. After the blizzard was over they were walking around and found that one tiny baby had fallen into a hole and in the blizzard the hole had frozen nearly entirely over. The crew on that show is instructed to never, ever, under any circumstances intervene. But they absolutely couldn’t just let the little fluffy baby freeze to death and they pulled him out. Do you think anyone watching or any producer criticized them for it? Doubtful. Do you think it made any difference to anyone other than that little penguin and its mom? Again, very doubtful.
Thanks for a lovely story. Yes, they are cute.