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The Miracle Of Birth

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By MIKE DeWITT, Tribune correspondent

Published: December 8, 2007

Her name is Pseudemys floridana floridana. At 13 inches long, 7 inches tall and 10 inches wide, she's regarded as a mature female, wise in the ways of her world. She's beautiful and today, she's bone tired.

Her day began early. Following faithfully an instinct as old as time itself, she climbed with clumsy determination from the slow-moving river that is her home. On this day and this day only, nature required that she become a creature of the land.

On any other day, she'd be basking on a riverside log, regulating the temperature of her body with the warmth of a sunny afternoon. A vegetarian, she'd occasionally leave her perch to feed on the algae that blooms on the river's surface.

A graceful swimmer, the water is her domain. Her skin is dark green broken by stripes of bright yellow. Her shell is adorned in swirls of yellow, green and brown, superbly camouflaging her presence from predators. At the slightest hint of a threat, she vanishes with a splash, evading danger with powerful strokes of her paddle-like appendages.

But today, as she plods ungainly from the river and into the forest, she is vulnerable. Her coloration, adapted so perfectly to conceal her among the weeds on the river's bank, is all but ineffective in the brown hues of winter foliage. She has only the refuge of her shell, shrouded in a drying layer of mud and algae, to save her.

Such is the sacrifice of motherhood in the life of a Florida Cooter, Florida's most common freshwater turtle.
Wild Kingdom
The particular arrangement of her name is known among biologists as taxonomy. It describes her place among the two million species in the kingdom Animalia. It was a beautiful day in the life of that richly populated kingdom that she and I crossed paths.

I was out for a hike in the Green Swamp, a winter pleasure that no one living in or near Pasco County should be without. The forests of Florida are spectacular this time of year.

Where autumn renders brown the green undergrowth summer, winter renders it bare. It is a time when the forest opens up to the eye for great distances. I was appreciating this seasonal phenomenon when I spotted her.

With the river better than a half-mile from my position, I knew she had come a great distance. She had positioned herself in the middle of the trail, and was using her oar-like back legs to excavate the ground behind her.

On closer inspection I saw that she had dug not one hole, but three. These were an inch apart and about the volume of a soda can. I kept my distance, not wanting to interrupt her labor. At one point she craned her head toward me, perhaps to discern my intentions. I noticed that one of the stripes on her head ran unbroken through her eyes, a touch of camouflage that would be the envy of any commando.

So there we were - she, obviously in the late stages of labor, and I, fully caught up in the early stages of amazement.

Against All Odds

The first egg took me by surprise. Although I had no idea what would precede its appearance, I nevertheless expected her to announce in some fashion its arrival. She did not. It emerged from an opening beneath her tail and dropped like a one-foot putt into the hole nearest me.

Using her back legs, she shifted slightly, and deposited her second egg into the center hole. Then she placed her foot into the first hole, a delicate move that served to tamp down the egg while at the same time giving her enough purchase to be shifted toward the third hole. Wet and shiny emerged the third egg, dropping noiselessly into its nest.

I lay down next to her, bringing my camera to my eye. For the next several minutes I photographed her as she brought each of a dozen eggs into this world. Occasionally, her neck would fully extend, and she would momentarily eye me over the top of her shell.

I'd transformed into a Lamaze coach specializing in amphibians. I wanted to give her ice chips. I wanted to tell her she was doing great. I wanted her to shout at me to get that @#%& camera out of her face.

It was over as suddenly as it began. She proceeded to cover the holes, knitting her paddles into fists to push the piles of sand toward the eggs. She followed with a delicate side-to-side maneuver, using the bottom of her shell to compact and smooth the sand until virtually no trace of the nest remained.

And with that, she lumbered off without as much as a glance to her rear. Her pace was a weary one, with each leg seeming to hang in the air for a brief second before settling onto the trail.

As I watched her walk away, it was good to know she would meet no roads on her way home. Vehicle traffic kills thousands of female cooters annually as they journey to ensure the survival of their kind. Luckily, she had only to survive the forest.

The odds against the survival of her eggs are less encouraging. Turtle eggs are a delicacy among raccoons, bobcats and other creatures, including man. They will most likely be lost to predation.

In the most favorable of scenarios, the hatchlings will emerge in three to six months, eyes open and fully independent. Instinct will direct them to their ancestral home, but it will not protect them against the many creatures who view them as easy pickings. Only the strongest and luckiest among them will survive to swim in the river.

As I continued my way down the trail I chose the more optimistic outcome. I smiled inwardly at the thought of handing out celebratory turtle cigars wrapped in pink and blue. I made a mental note to return to this place, to check up on the kids.

After all, I had just attended the birth of a clutch of turtles, and so had been an eyewitness to the instinctual expression of hope that is one of the greatest miracles in the wild kingdom.

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