Things I never dreamt I would see - Part 3

Wanting to see what it would be like when those eggs hatched, I tried to find time to be there on the beach every day after the eggs were laid, but I had far too many other duties to make it there that often. However, about a month or so later I got lucky as the ping-pong-ball-size eggs of several giant green turtles hatched, and the tiny hatchlings dug their way out of the sand and made a dash for safety in the sea. By pure good luck I even saw some of the hatchlings from the very same eggs I had seen laid.

That warm day I was at first happy to see that a wide stretch of the beach was covered with tiny little turtles moving toward the sea. However, even though their parents had been four or five feet long, they were so small that two of them could have perched on my palm, and each hard thrust of all four of their legs moved them less than an inch, while above them whirled a massive swarm of screeching seagulls which swooped down, snatched up a tiny newborn turtle, flew far above the sunbaked surface of the paved road, dropped it, and then ripped its fractured body into edible size pieces and ate it.

But that was only part of the horrible slaughter that occurred in front of my eyes that day. Native to India is a dog species named the Pariah. Pariah, in English, of course, means a social outcast, and in India there is a group of people named Pariahs who are considered for some reason to be lower than the very lowest low. Why the native Indian dog is named the “Pariah dog” I never learned. However, usually just dismissively called “Pye dogs” by the people, they were everywhere.

Several times before that hatching day I had driven onto the beach and seen packs of Pye dogs sniffing at the sand, digging in the area where the turtle eggs had been laid, and greedily inhaling great mouthfuls of the eggs as yellow yolk dripped off their large jaws; but what I saw on that hatching day was far worse than that.

As the tiny hatchlings struggled madly to make their way to the safety in the warm waters of the Arabian Sea which lapped the edge of the beach, its waves breaking in a warm gentle surf in which Lolly and I often reveled, the tiny turtles were ruthlessly pursued by packs of as many as eight or 10 Pye dogs that greedily snapped them up off the sand and ground the poor little things into a bloody mush which dribbled off their jaws.

“There, but for the grace of God, go we,” I thought that sunny day as I watched.