Chilling with dead turtles

Its been an eventful few days since I last wrote. My day off, Tuesday, was glorious. All the interns, myself included, headed for the mainland in pursuit of cheap food, fast cars and non-sand covered things. My main intention, however, was procurement of a bicycle. Since last summer I've been without a bike and I now greatly miss it, especially being on such a small island. Anyways, I found a seller on craigslist and decided to contact him to check it out. Unfortunately, upon contacting him I could barely understand him through his thick accent and clearly inebriated voice. I eventually scratched that, especially after realizing that he probably stole his "large number of bikes" for me to look at. Gotta love craigslist. Anyways, we headed up to Wilmington to check out the scene and see if there were any used bikes at the local shops. Dismal failure on that front, so to comfort myself, I bought nachos...a lot of nachos. Wilmington is a pretty cool beach city, not as built up and touristy as VA Beach or Duck nor as ritzy as BHI. It was a welcome break for sure, as nice as it is living on the equivalent of an island country club, a little variation is nice.
By the time we were done exploring it was time to head back down to Southport for dinner with the rest of the crew. We met up at an old local's joint by the name of Provisions. Extraordinarily unassuming from the outside, Provisions is home to some of the best shrimp and crab cakes I've had. Fried in grease that was probably used as lubricant for the boats in the marina, its the epitome of a salty hangout. I was in heaven. To further the experience, Provisions is set on the Indigo Plantation marina, overlooking part of a salt marsh on the Cape Fear river. Shrimp, crab cakes and gorgeous scenery...I could do this for awhile.
Wednesday was supposed to be CPR/First Aid training. After waking up though, we learned that due to a lack of staff, the education people (that's me) wouldn't be able to participate today. Instead, we were tasked with all sorts of fun busy work. Trail maintenance, presentation practice etc. The afternoon, however, was a little ripe for my taste. Part of our jobs as conservancy interns is to deal with dead sea turtles that have washed ashore. Oftentimes these turtles have been floating for days at a time, so by the time they reach us, they re bloated and ready to pop. Wednesday was our lucky day. We got a call sometime in the afternoon that a dead loggerhead had washed ashore and needed attention. Off we went, measurement tools and scalpels in hand. We arrived on the scene just in time for the winds to turn and all be blasted in the face with the stench of rotting turtle. After resisting our collective gag urge, we proceeded to cut off a flipper (to be sent in for lab analysis) and popped her open to determine the cause of death. I think the following picture explains it all:Mmm tasty.

Today was just another day of training. Nothing terribly exciting except for an emergency call from the marina about a stranded-live turtle. For the turtle interns of the group, this was really exciting news. Thus far we've had a turtle skeleton, a freshly dead turtle and finally now a live one! We drove as fast as the golf carts would allow (around 18mph) to the other side of the island in pursuit of our first live one. Upon arrival, we found a tired and rather emaciated green turtle. Green turtles are quite rare in this region as they much prefer the warmer waters of the Carri bean. We immediately took it into our protective care and it is currently on its way to a local turtle hospital.