The Tease

Despite appearances, she's a very demanding turtle and quite picky too.

This girl pictured above is called 'The Tease'. The first time we saw her was by sheer luck. Ace turtler Dave Veljacic just happened to be cruising the beach at 6:00 in the evening when he stumbled upon our first turtle of the season (2001). She did not receive her nickname until her next nesting events, these ones after dark.

One night we encountered this turtle crawling back to the ocean, she had crawled about 50 yards until she hit the woodline, passing by really good dunes. We looked at her tags and saw her off. Later that night she came up again and again we found her returning to the surf, this time with bloody flippers. She had crawled again to the woodline and on her way back she crawled over and destroyed a Yucca, a Spanish Bayonet plant, so-called because a blade can be driven through a hand like a knife through butter, no kidding.

Later that night she crawled again, this time she entered the woods before turning around and crawled through a stand of cacti. We found her with jumping cacti (small ball-like cacti that aren't rooted) all over her neck, one eye, and flippers. Needless to say, dawn came and she was obviously taking the rest of the night off.

The next night she earned her nickname as she crawled two more times, both times into the woods and through good nesting habitat. No nest yet.

Finally, on the third night of crawling, after two more false crawls, we call them 'dry runs' on Wassaw, she nested on a high dune. It is quite amusing to see a turtle slide down the face of an 8 foot dune like a sled. She seemed quite surprised when she reached the bottom.

For the rest of the season it was the norm for her to tease us several times before actually depositing a nest.