Because of Nickel: The Adventures of a Used Turtle Salesman

By Jim Gamlin

Because of Nickel, the adventures of a Used Turtle Salesman, is the story
of the authors lifelong attachment to his animal friends and his decade
long quest to fi nd homes for non- releasable sea turtles like his friend
Nickel the sea turtle at Chicagos Shedd Aquarium.
A continuation of Jim Gamlins preceding book, A Home for Nickel, this
story chronicles the many dedicated animal care people he meets during
his journey along with the often poignant story of a life fully surrendered to
his animal companions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483655284

Jim Gamlin

Jim Gamlin is a fisheries biologist and has been a field editor for MidWest Outdoors magazine for the last twenty-five years. Gamlin?s travels eventually brought him to Florida, where he unexpectedly became involved with sea turtles. He lives in northern Illinois, surrounded by his home aquariums, two dogs, and several tortoises.

Book preview

BECAUSE OF

NICKEL

The Adventures of a

Used Turtle Salesman

Jim Gamlin

Front cover photo by Ann Lyssenko

Back cover by Carol Flisak

Copyright © 2013 by Jim Gamlin.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013910897

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4836-5527-7

                            Softcover                         978-1-4836-5526-0

                            Ebook                             978-1-4836-5528-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 07/15/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

128459

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1       Forgotten Friends

Chapter 2       Final Journey

Chapter 3       The Guilty

Chapter 4       Heart

Chapter 5       Hope

Chapter 6       Rescue

Chapter 7       The First Step

Chapter 8       The Long Road

Chapter 9       Missions

Chapter 10       A Home

Chapter 11       If You Dare

Chapter 12       Oscar

Chapter 13       My Friends

Chapter 14       Definition

Chapter 15       The Long Walk

Chapter 16       Or Deal

Chapter 17       Relentless

Chapter 18       The Rebirthday

Chapter 19       Aloha

Chapter 20       The Uneven Road

Chapter 21       Friday

Chapter 22       An Old Friend Remembered

Chapter 23       Fate

Chapter 24       Katrina

Chapter 25       Restart

Chapter 26       Finally!

Chapter 27       Unexpected Things

Chapter 28       Things From The Past

Chapter 29       Mardi

Chapter 30       Bay

Chapter 31       Cold Reception.

Chapter 32       Brain Cramp Overcome!

Chapter 33       Stinkbed

Chapter 34       They Never Said It Would Be Easy!

Chapter 35       At Last!

Chapter 36       So, What Else Is New?

Chapter 37       The Georgia Sea Turtle Center

Chapter 38       Quiet Time

Chapter 39       Making The Best Of It

Chapter 40       Happy Anniversary

Chapter 41       Charlotte

Chapter 42       A Path Less Traveled

Chapter 43       Deer Run

Chapter 44       Spiderman

Chapter 45       The Slick

Chapter 46       Kemp’s Bones

Chapter 47       All Good Zoos

Chapter 48       When It Rains It Pours

Chapter 49       Thanks Turdy

Chapter 50       Cross Creek

Chapter 51       The Long And The Short Of It

Chapter 52       Choppie

Chapter 53       Fran

Chapter 54       My Nickel Dogs

Chapter 55       Teddy And The Turtles

Chapter 56       Looking Back

These adventures of a used turtle salesman are dedicated to all my animal friends who have given me so much and enriched my life. Especially remembered are Clawed, Salty, Choppie, Barney, Cappy, Gus, Marlin, and of course Nickel.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my friends Mike Bier, Cathy Penny Mikuta, Zora Timotijevic, Rick and Lori Sall, Jean Beasley, Liz Tylicki, Harry Appel, Jen DeMaria, Corinne Rose, Bryan Bortman, William Coles, Michelle Kaylor, Don and Margie Jensen, Herb and Yea Bernett, and all the people at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital, Georgia Sea Turtle Center, and the Sea Turtle Hospital in the Florida Keys. And of course Save A Turtle of the Florida Keys for giving me such a wonderful mission in life.

CHAPTER 1

Forgotten Friends

The two dogs had become friends. This was as much out of a shared necessity as anything else in their misery loves company world. Both of them had once been coveted, cute, cuddly puppies. They had been hugged and fawned over by their human families. But as they outgrew puppyhood, they became less adored, simply an inconvenience, relegated to neglect and indifference. A mistake. Their days filled with boredom and the hope for some crumb of attention cast their way from the once indulgent, now indifferent human pack that had seen fit to bring them home but who now regretted having ever done so. Their existence was less and less acknowledged until at some point the dogs themselves abandoned hope and became by necessity, fully adapted to the life of a feral animal.

One could make the argument that there were worse places to be jettisoned into than the island of St. Croix, a tourist Mecca that was part of the small archipelago making up the U.S. Virgin Islands. Nevertheless, as the two dogs rhythmically trotted along the beach, the beauty that surrounded them was of little consequence. The whole force of their being was now focused on surviving another day. During this monotonous beach patrol they would often abruptly stop and scratch with concentrated vengeance at the colony of fleas that perpetually tormented them and scurried about under the sheltered canopy of each dog’s fur. It was a battle in which the fleas were winning and showed no quarter, a battle that went on throughout the night and into the next day again. Each morning when the dogs awoke from the tortured sleep they had endured, the sand around them was dotted with tiny specks of canine blood left over from the fleas’ nocturnal meal.

The unfortunate duo had long ago learned to ignore the array of tourists that basked on the beach just a few yards away. Sometimes they could expect a stray morsel of food to be thrown their way, but more often than not they were ignored as if nonexistent. Or, if they were acknowledged, they were yelled at to Go Home! For these dogs, as with so many others, there was no home to go to and as the sun faded from that tropical sky, they continued the endless walk and were cooled by the ocean breezes while they vigilantly looked for a target of opportunity that might provide sustenance for still another day in Paradise. The darkness of the night as it always had and always would, arrived without fanfare.

CHAPTER 2

Final Journey

The land had given birth to her, but the sea was her home. It had been so for several decades now and her dark shell should have shown evidence of her advanced age. There should have been a garden of algae along with the odd colony here and there of hitchhiking barnacles, but this was not the case. Her shell was relatively pristine in appearance, uncommonly so for an animal of her age. It was as if she had led a charmed existence, dodging all of life’s imperfections along her way. Still, there was an aura of ancientness about her, something imperceptible that could not be defined by words.

This night, as the sun sank into the ocean’s horizon, she was once again on a familiar mission. It was a mission that had been carried out countless times in the past, sometimes with difficulty, sometimes uneventfully, but never with ease.

Her name was Jahna. She was a Green sea turtle, and this was the night that had been chosen for her to dig the nest in which to deposit her eggs, the precious internal cargo that had perpetuated her kind since old and forgotten times.

As her voyage continued, the great flippers she possessed propelled her onward with their rhythmic slow movement in a stroke… stroke… stroke, reminiscent of galley slaves chained to their oars toiling to a drumbeat cadence. This however, was a movement of freedom and purpose that brought her closer with each passing minute to her intended destination, the island of St.Croix.

Jahna lifted her head out of the water as the trailing phosphorescent wake caught up with her and she felt it wash past. She floated at the surface for a second and took a breath of air, feeling the soothing brine swirl past.

The beach lay just ahead now and she could see it defined by the glow of the moon reflecting off the sea that shimmered even in the darkness. Her lower shell or plastron was just beginning to be caressed by the coral sand of this shallow shoreline, telling her that she was now ending her long journey. Jahna labored forth, becoming less and less buoyant with each stride until she was beached and dripping at the sea’s edge.

The great turtle looked around at the apparent stillness that surrounded her arrival. A quiet sense of serenity was present that seemed to extend from the star filled sky down to the still warm sand beach. Jahna then pulled herself forward until her rear flippers and tail had too exited the water.

On this silent night, Jahna had touched her ocean for the last time. She would not return.

CHAPTER 3

The Guilty

The two dogs were just awakening from their heat induced stupor, invigorated by the cool evening air and the welcome breeze off the ocean. They arose stiffly; reverse arched their backs, then extended their front legs and spread their toes as the duo stretched in unison. It was a glorious stretch, one that belied their current situation. Dogs are survivors. They revel in even the tiniest of pleasures. They perhaps took some joy in the knowledge that they were about to begin the familiar nightly patrol of the beach in search of whatever edible debris they hopefully might come across. It was their beach now. The humans had left.

Sadly, this night would go as so many others had before in the monotonous march, with no lucky find of a half eaten hot dog or a few scattered potato chip fragments. They then turned their focus to the ocean’s edge, searching for an unlucky fish or perhaps a bird that may lay hidden among the washed up sea grass mat that was still arriving, driven by the onshore wind. Once again, they found nothing.

It had been a long time since either of them had eaten, even longer since they had eaten well and so they half heartedly began to pick a few stranded snails out of the greenery and made a weak attempt to crunch them up with unsatisfying results. But then as the walk continued, the dogs caught sight of a large oval object silhouetted by the moonlight. It was clearly defined and lay just ahead on top of the sand. The wind brought an unfamiliar scent to their inquisitive noses. Standing motionless, they paused for just a second and then began to trot in the direction of the unknown form, picking up speed as they advanced, like two shipwrecked sailors who had discovered a cache.

Jahna did not hear them coming until it was too late. She would in any event have been able to do little, beached and ponderous as she was, and totally out of her natural element. Her only purpose here was to perpetuate her species.

The two dogs were on her quickly and commenced to sniff and circle excitedly, like two hungry sharks pondering what this thing was that had come their way, cautiously probing for an opening in what they sensed was a living thing.

They pawed furiously at the shell and flippers with little result until they came upon the eyes. Here the dog’s tongues found something of interest and they licked at the salt flavored tears that were dripping from them until the supply was exhausted and they began to probe for more of this strange manna that seemed to be coming from these two orbs. Scratching, pawing, licking, and nipping, they finally gave up, satisfied that there was nothing more of interest here, and then dejectedly continued this unending patrol down the beach, resuming their hellish existence. It was an existence not of their own making, but one that had been forced upon them, undeserved.

As for Jahna? The once beautiful unscarred animal now lay forlornly on the beach, silent and motionless. She had not seen the dogs coming. The last thing she had seen was the beauty of the still rising moon. She would have to carry that vision of the moon in her heart.

She would not see it again.

CHAPTER 4

Heart

Jahna rested tragically silent on the damp beach. The sand below her had been made moist and reddened by her own blood. It was the same blood that had coursed through her system just moments before and powered the flippers that had brought her to this beach. She looked like some sort of collapsed tent and remained forlornly motionless for some indeterminable length of time, perhaps taking stock of things in her broken, bloody, and confused state. But then, drawing from within, drawing on the strength of the generations that had come before her, she began to look around. The night seemed to be strangely darker than before. She could not seem to make out the twinkling stars that were so familiar to her, or the white crested waves breaking at the shoreline, those waves that she could still plainly hear. She could not know that the stars, shore, clouds, and the ocean itself were things she would not gaze upon with wonder again in this lifetime. For her, the darkness was now permanent. Jahna was blind.

One thing however was still intact. It was indispensible. It was her strong heart. It was the heart of a veteran and ancient sailor. The heart of a survivor that had served her and her kind since the beginning of time. Jahna again looked around and just as before saw nothing, although through her nostrils and skin she could sense where she might be. The call within her was unfailingly strong. Incredibly, Jahna was determined that she would fulfill the purpose for which she had come, the purpose that had cost her so much. She would still try to nest.

Pushing on, she laboriously advanced landward. This task made even more difficult now. Forward. Stop. Forward. Stop. Jahna fought her way on until abruptly and without warning she came to a sudden halt. She had hit a wall. Literally. Her march had been blocked by a concrete abutment bordering the back of the beach.

Jahna with determination pushed against this invisible object for awhile. Rising up on her flippers that could tenuously support her weight for only a short time, she tried several times to scale this unseen hurdle before she dropped down and rested flat on the sand, momentarily defeated, her energy steadily draining. She stayed there for awhile, as though thinking, her white throat expanding and contracting as she breathed and moved her head about. Gathering herself for perhaps one more effort in this quest, she backed away from the wall that had so cruelly frustrated her, turned to the right and made her way across the beach. Before long, there it was. Jahna sensed that she had arrived at the location she had sought since making her ill fated landing earlier that night.

She rested once more before commencing the nesting dig. Her movements were becoming more deliberate and labored now, but summoning all her strength for perhaps the last time, her rear flippers began excavating the chosen resting place for her eggs. One by one, the cupped flippers removed the surrounding aggregate. Faithfully. Gallantly. Without complaint. Such effort would surely be rewarded. But, little by little, her effort slowed, her flippers drooped more and more, and her head fell to the sand where she fell into unconsciousness.

This journey which had cost Jahna her sight and possibly her life had not been successful.

CHAPTER 5

Hope

On September 9, 2003, at 6:45 in the morning, in the office of William Coles, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the island of St.Croix, a phone rang. There was a frantic agitated voice on the other end of the line. There’s a sea turtle out on the beach that has been attacked by dogs. There’s blood all over. Can you come? It is still alive. Coles responded that he was on his way. By 7:00 am, in what was becoming an all too familiar routine, he had already picked up his sea turtle stranding kit and called a veterinarian named Paul Hess, on the emergency line. He also contacted the Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife to let them know what was going on. In the unfortunate case the turtle had to be euthanized, he would need their permission. By 7:15 am, William, and Paul had made it to the beach

The two of them then got out of the truck and dropped over the wall at the back of the beach. Walking out on the sand they saw what appeared to be two sets of dog tracks but they couldn’t be sure of that number because the overnight rain had to a great extent washed out the imprints. They looked around scanning the area and at first saw nothing. Then as they turned to their left, they caught sight of the turtle. There rested Jahna, still lying silently facing the wall that had been her nemesis. The area surrounding her was a bloody mess.

William could see from marks in the sand that incredibly, indicated the turtle had still tried to nest but had not been successful. She was a big Green sea turtle that he estimated would weigh in at over 250 pounds. Coles and the veterinarian’s initial prognosis was that the turtle was healthy and except for the badly damaged eyes it might be best to return her to the water. There were just not the facilities or funding available to house, care for, and possibly rehabilitate such a large animal. He felt it was better to leave this decision to the experts. He next drove the truck out onto the beach and the two men with no small effort were able to get her into the back of the truck.

By 8:00am Coles had returned to his office with his sea turtle cargo. While there, he began to gather all the necessary phone numbers he felt he would need, which now also included Environmental Enforcement. After he made that call he also contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s sea turtle coordinator to see if there was a place that might take care of the turtle. He was told that his best bet for long term care of the animal was at one of the sea turtle rehabilitation facilities located in Florida. He was given the name of Megan Conti at Florida Wildlife and Conservation Commission. That contact was made.

Only two hours after receiving the initial emergency phone call, by 8:45am a whole group of people had gathered at the office of Paul Hess, D.V.M., the same vet who had accompanied William Coles down to the beach. The gathering now included the director of the local animal shelter. After discussing all the options, the possibility of an eye transplant was weighed but this wasn’t a realistic procedure. Regretfully, they determined that euthanasia was the best course, but also decided to wait to hear from Florida and Megan Conti.

At 11:00 am they got their answer. The Turtle Hospital in the Florida Keys would take Jahna. The plan was to rehab her there if possible, and then if she was non releasable, Jahna would be given a permanent home somewhere.

The next task for William Coles was to arrange a flight for the turtle to Miami and also acquire or build a shipping crate. Neither mission met with immediate success. FedEx would not ship live animals so it looked like the next day’s American Airlines flight was their best and only remaining hope. If no transportation was found, Jahna would most likely have to be euthanized. There was no luck on the shipping crate front either. Here, William took matters into his own hands, constructing one out of a used pallet and a pair of heavy shipping boxes. This whole contraption was then lined with plastic.

At 4:00pm, he also called the Turtle Hospital and told them everything was ready. They just needed to hear from the airline. At 6:00pm, William Coles returned home. He went to bed shortly thereafter. His sleep was restless. Jahna’s life was held in the balance. It had been only a little over twenty four hours since she had left the comfort of the ocean.

CHAPTER 6

Rescue

The next day, September 10, 2003, word came at last to Jahna’s rescuers. American Airlines had agreed to fly the turtle to Miami, And, even more good news. The flight would be donated. Interestingly enough, the very plane Jahna would be flying on was said to have been used by the president George H. W. Bush at some time during his term in office, between 1988 and 1992. The origins of the aircraft could not be confirmed, but it was a well known fact that the former president was an avid fisherman who liked to test the backcountry waters for bonefish and tarpon off the Florida Keys near Islamorada. Perhaps this smaller aircraft