geminigirl | Turtle Sex (Reply)



"Turtle Sex" on Google Video
Turtle Sex

barking_iguana sent me the above video. I don't know if I ever told him the following story, or he just thought I would be amused by the video, but here's my story about turtle sex.

I spent some time working for a program called Youth Enrichment Services. They were a partly-town funded youth program that provided after school, weekend and summer programs for teenagers, and summer programs for elementary kids as well. Part of my job involved running the Summer Day program which was an partly educational, partly day care type program for the five to twelve year olds. Each week we had a theme that we based our education and arts and crafts programs on, and often, our field trips as well. One week, our theme was "reptiles" which included a trip to the Reptile Museum. We went through part of the museum, and in the middle there was a pen, with large tortoises of several varieties. They sat the kids down around the edge, and periodially, there was a docent who would come and talk about various animals and the kids could touch them and see them and hold snakes and things. So my kids (about 30 5-12 year olds, plus my staff, 2 CITs who were thirteen, and six fifteen and sixteen year old counselors) are trying to get the kids settled, when one tortoise mounts another. I hear snickering and giggling. I turn around and see what the tortoises are doing. And I cringe. I'm not the one who needs to be explaining what the animals are doing to someone else's five year old, nor should any of my staff-this is one of those things where you don't want to step on someone else's parenting-toes.. I grab my counselors and through my own snickers and giggles, tell them to please keep it under control, if they need to step away, that it's fine. I find a co-worker who is helping to chaperone the trip, and we have a good giggle over it. Then, the docent begins her presentation. And one of my older kids (I think he was eleven) raises his hand and immediately asks "Is that turtle going to get pregnant?" The docent handled it marvelously and said "no, they're different kinds of turtles."

So, I've seen up close tortoise sex. And it's not pretty.