babies, releases and more rain

I think it's rained every day this past week. It's getting old. Jeff said it's rained five inches in the past two days and unfortunately for us, with so many babies hatching now, it has rained during probably 3 of the 4 or five releases we've had this week. Which of course means we're soaked by the time all the babies make their way to the ocean. We're all a bit worn out by all the rain and turtle activity. But then everything seems a little more grey after another sleepless night.

I've been on corral duty the past two nights, which I love seeing the effect on my pay check after a 12-13 hour shift, but man I'm tired right now. Saturday night Jeff and I dug up two nests around 5:15 am, but it was so cold and cloudy that even after an hour and a half on the beach we had to bring 66 hatchlings back with us to STI because they didn't even move. Last night we dug down to find five nests with fully hatched hatchlings and because of the heavy rain we dug them up to keep them from the possibility of drowning. But because they probably would have spent a few more days in the corral we now have boxes of inactive hatchlings totally around 500 spread around the gift shop. On one hand it's really awesome that we have so many babies hatching and at our releases we are able to release so many hundreds of babies, but it means a lot more time and paperwork and a lot more worrying about how the numbers add up. I came up to STI at five this morning to check on the babies and Lucy asked me to release any that were ready at around seven. So, rather than sleep for an hour and struggle to wake up again I went into Port Isabel and did my grocery shopping and then came back to take 14 of them out to the beach.

Despite all of the rain all of the interns had a pretty fabulous forth of July holiday. Two of the interns had friends come into town so we had a big crowd for our barbecue and we all had a great time hanging out together. We enjoyed watching the big fireworks show, which as always was impressive. And due to all of the rain we even closed early a few days, so we had extra time to spend walking the beach and watching movies.

Today is my day off so hopefully I'll be able to balance some sleep with the tons of chores I need to do. If everything goes well by the end of the day my car will be clean, my room will be clean, I will have read a good book, I will have clean clothes....

Lean a new word (like pelagic or gustatory).