rubber for colour filters.”
I tried not to laugh but I couldn’t help smiling. The image it conjured up in my mind was hilarious.
“I know,” she said. “Everybody laughs. It is funny and they do look ludicrous when they are wearing them, but it is harmless to the turtles. The glue peels off and I release them to the sea after any experiments. You wouldn’t believe how many people want to interview me about my bespectacled turtles. They are much more interested in that than in my nest predation studies.”
I rose to the bait. “Which are?”
“Oh, you know. I check each nest in our little hatchery here after it has come up and analyze the contents for diseased or depredated eggs, et cetera.”
“You have a hatchery on the island?” I asked, surprised and not all that interested in the contents of an old nest. I hadn’t read anything about the hatchery and no one had mentioned it.
“Well, it’s really a tiny hatchery. Most of the nests laid by the females we leave in place now, but it used to be that every nest that was laid was dug up and transferred to a fenced-in area so that the feral pigs and other animals didn’t gorge themselves. Now we only dig up a few nests for research purposes. We get the odd photographer too who wants to film a nest erupting. It’s quite a sight. You should sit up one night — they only come up at night — and see if you get lucky.”
“So you did your Ph.D. on sea turtles?”
She grunted.
“Where did you do it? What university?”
She moved suddenly and tripped over a pair of shoes on the floor. After I made the motions of helping her up I tried to take up where we left off, but she was having none of it. The moment was lost.
chapter seven
During lunch we all listened to the radio and news of Hurricane Chase. It had pummelled the DR and Haiti and was barrelling down on the eastern seaboard of the United States — touchdown estimated at Charleston, South Carolina. We were right in its path unless some unforeseen phenomenon steered it away. As a result we were on alert for evacuation within twenty-four hours. It was frustrating, exciting, and a bit frightening, all at the same time. Now that I had seen the island and realized we were really only as high above sea level as the mercurial dunes that formed the island, it kind of hit home what sitting ducks we were. But nobody seemed too perturbed about it so I assumed everything was under control.
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