Larisa Avens

In the past, my turtle work has mainly involved live turtles, which has generally elicited a great deal of interest from family and friends. Live turtles are a source of fascination and amazement. Dead turtles, although they provide a great deal of information about these difficult-to-study animals, are (for most people) quite the opposite. Over the past few weeks I've started working more with dead turtles and, because of cold and inclement weather, have been confined to cutting up dead turtle pieces/parts in an indoor lab. This has occurred to the disgust of many co-workers and comments have been varied, including 'I guess you have to get used to that smell' to 'Oh, it's you causing that horrible smell' to the ubiquitous 'That's the worst smell ever'. My favorite, however, came from the elderly father of a friend who was touring the lab. He, like so many before him, thought that dead sea turtle smelled worse than anything he'd ever smelled before. However, his main concern was whether, after working with dead turtles all day and being saturated with the smell, I would shower before cooking dinner at home for my husband. Go figure.