Kartik Shanker

Micheal Fricks exorcist turtle reminded me of a warm and sunny afternoon on the east coast of Great Nicobar. Bleary eyed after the morning nap, we were tramping through the littoral forest, looking for tree shrews, the little insectivores that are not shrews, and mostly don?t live on trees. The ones that evolutionary biologists thought were ancestral to primates, but now believe are most closely related to rabbits. Talk about a come down in life. Anyway, I digress. So, there we are, tramping, and looking seaward to see if we can catch a mirage of Sumatra in the shimmering heat, when we see this lumbering beast high up on the beach. In a tidal pool about 50 metres from the high tide line, she was wallowing like hippo in heat. First we thought she was just having fun, but gradually it dawned on us that the poor dear was trying to nest in the pool. I thought it might be the afternoon sun, but my leatherback expert friend, M.G. (and thats not Mahatma Gandhi) tells me that leatherbacks are not the Einstens of the turtle world. Just to keep pace with the madness, my assistants and partner resorted to chasing fish in the tidal pool, apparently with some hope of catching a few, while I expended several rolls of film on the turtle. Eventually she left, leaving us no clearer on how the leatherback mind works.