Topsail Island Real Estate & Vacation Rentals- Turtle Hopsital News – Topsail Beach, NC

Source –Topsail Voice

What’s Left(y)?
One Loggerhead, sans one front flipper who’s relocated to new tank every few months to keep up with his ever expanding carapace. That’s “Lefty” almost two years later.
Long story short, he literally blew in and stranded on a beach during a ferocious late summer storm. He was post-hatchling size, but still just over a few ounces. If he were a letter we could have slapped a first class stamp on him and shipped him back to the Sargasso Sea where he belonged at that stage of his life.
If we tried to release him from the beach he would have been fish food before he made it past the first sandbar. He stole our hearts and we decided to give him a chance.
Like most newly arrived hatchlings, “home” was a large blue basin. Every day we experienced the agony of defeat as we watched him reject every kind of food we waved in front of his face. Until the day one of our volunteers stumbled on a delicacy he just couldn’t refuse – coquina clams fresh out of the sand.
Of course he demanded them every day for weeks and that kept our clam digger really, really busy.  As he grew we all recognized that we had created the sea turtle equivalent of a “foodie.”  He would eat everything we dropped in, and then look at us like we were starving him.

As Lefty got bigger we gradually upgraded his tank size, encouraging more activity, exercise and watching to see if he could swim in more than one direction with only one flipper. In the wild, turtles his age would spend most of their time hanging out on the sargassum rafts, foraging almost at the surface and doing virtually no diving. They’re pretty camouflaged and relatively safe in that environment.
So when Lefty wasn’t eating he was spending most of the day floating around on the surface and sleeping with his flipper tucked over his back.
That was then.
Now he’s a big boy, about 15 pounds.  And he’s figured out that the only way to get his food is to dive, so he’s spending more time eating, sleeping and basically just chillin’ at the bottom of his tank. We still don’t know how well he can really navigate with only one front flipper because we’re so crowded we haven’t been able to get him into a tank large enough for him to even try. He looks like he can do it, but when your tank is square tank and on the small side you really can’t go anywhere.
He’s doing the best he can with what he has. He takes each day as it comes and adapts to whatever it brings, always with a smile on his little Loggerhead beak.
In fact, Lefty reminds us of us. We perform amazing feats daily in a little square box. We take whatever resources we can beg, borrow and re-purpose and (in the words of Tim Gunn) “make it work.” And that’s not just not us blowing our own horn. Time and again we’ve been told by people that whenever they ask our colleagues about our turtle hospital the one common response is:  they do more, with less, than anybody.
We’re looking forward to the same thing Lefty is: a bigger place where we can show the world what we’re really capable of! Help us get there in 2010 by stepping up to our “Family Giving Challenge” or by adopting one of our patients. Check out the details on our website: www.seaturtlehospital.org.  A big “flipper” hug from Lefty!

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Chris Rackley 910.538.2145/910.328.5211- Lewis Realty Associates, Inc.- Topsail Island Real Estate, Topsail Island MLS and Topsail Island Vacation Rentals – We Know Topsail Island . . .We have Been Here Over Forty Five Years! Our brokers use over 100 years of experience with a commitment to honesty and integrity through professional service. Our local knowledge will prove to be valuable to buyers looking for a coastal property and our internet and marketing strategies will be an asset to any sellers’ goals. Our assortment of Topsail Island Vacation & Topsail Island Long Term Rentals rental property will fulfill your needs whether staying on the coast for a week or a lifetime.