Dinosaurs and Turtles

Two dinosaurs drawn on tee shirts by my dear friend & former lover M.

I met her tonight to hear a lecture on the leatherback turtle, a sea species that can average 800 pounds in weight and dive deeper than the great whales. Like most of life on the planet, it’s under attack from the depredations of h. sapiens, the giant killer apes who live (mostly) ashore.

A couple of years ago my brother and I found one on the Atlantic shore of the Faraway Island; it was quite dead, the bones in the flippers already exposed. The thing was unbelievably HUGE, easily five feet long. Evidently they sometimes get confused in the fall when sudden temperature changes in the ocean screw up their systems and they beach. They only come ashore normally to lay eggs, and that’s only the females; the birthing beaches are all found in tropical climes. It was a little like the ending of La Dolce Vita, when after the long night's party the decadent gliterati stumble out onto the beach to find the sea monster washed ashore...