The moon is half full and waning.
The moon is half full and waning. It has already set leaving only the meager starlight to illuminate the August night. The ocean is relatively calm, the waves rolling gently out of the blackness with scarcely a brief flash of white from a breaking crest or the phosphorescent sparkle of a simple marine life-form. The tide is rising. A dark shape awkwardly emerges from the water half walking, half dragging itself up onto the sandy shore. For an instant a distant flash of lightning reveals the rounded top of the large stone-like creature steadily moving higher up the slope of the beach. Rain begins to fall; the flashes are brighter and more frequent the thunder louder. The large animal begins to dig in the sand with its paddle-like hind feet.
Finally it can reach no deeper having dug less than half a meter. From it's backside, already positioned over the hole, flexible leathery spheres shrouded in a thick mucous begin to emerge, each about the size of a golf ball. Quickly they plop into the hole one by one until no more remain inside the reptile, about a hundred in all. Now the beast, visibly tired, begins scooping the sand back into the hole covering the precious eggs that will assure the future of her species. She positions her hard bony underplate, over the mound of sand and pushing downward with her flippers raises her heavy body into the air and quickly lets it fall with a resounding thud, repeating the process until the nest is firmly packed. Near exhaustion the female Olive Ridley Turtle begins her laborious trek back to the water's edge stopping frequently to rest until, at last, the blackness of the sea swallows her bulky form.
For many thousands of years this scene has been played out with millions of turtles of many different species. Later come the coyotes, raccoons, coatis and peccaries to dig out the nutritious white blobs. Pumas and jaguars kill and eat the defenseless females during egg laying. The ever present ants take their toll. Depending on weather and sunlight the eggs that escape predation hatch between 45 to 60 days later.
With luck, a few of the first to drag themselves up onto the beach and zero-in on the movement of the waves are able to evade the crabs waiting in ambush and traverse the 50 meters or so to the water, only to confront the many species of marine creatures waiting to gobble them up. But as the rest begin to emerge a passing hawk, frigatebird or vulture spots one of the hatchlings and swoops down to snatch it up. Other birds follow. Even the white-faced capuchin monkeys take part in the feast. Almost none of the remaining hatchlings survive. Maybe as many as five of the original hundred tiny turtles, less than half the size of a hockey puck, succeed in entering the sea. With luck one female from every ten nests will grow to maturity and return to lay her eggs on the same beach ten to twelve years later.
That was before the arrival of Homo sapiens. Now maybe one nest in a hundred even survives detection to hatch naturally. Supposedly the most intelligent life form on the planet, man, efficiently detects and removes all of the eggs even before any of the other mammals find the nest. Few escape his careful search. The eggs in one nest can be sold to a local cantina for the equivalent of two day's wages. There they are opened, dropped into a shot glass with tomato sauce, lemon juice, Tabasco and guaro and swallowed raw. It is the "manly" thing to do and this concoction is believed to make the human male a more potent lover, but the effect, if any, is purely psychosomatic.
It is a depressing statement about the biological health of our planet when the futile quest for enhanced sexual potency by males of a single species, Homo sapiens, through consumption of animal products such as rhinoceros horn, tiger penis and turtle eggs, threatens to deprive these and other magnificient species of their very existence.
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