How to keep a turtle from crossing the road

FISHERMAN ISLAND

Q. Why did the diamondback terrapins cross the road?

A. Well, it’s not the why so much as the how.

Biologists know why – to lay eggs. The bigger question is how to keep the turtles from getting run over by cars and vans and campers and boat trailers and buses and 18-wheelers that zip across the island on U.S. 13, which just happens to run directly through the terrapin nesting ground.

That location explains why Terrapin No. 221 blithely marched across three lanes of traffic one Friday morning, here on the southern tip of the Eastern Shore. It had almost reached the shoulder of the fourth when it was clipped by a truck tire and rolled end-over-end.

Biologist Amanda Hackney watched it happen, even as she gunned her U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service vehicle down the road in a vain attempt to get there first.

“Sweetheart, that was not a good idea,” she told the terrapin, which had amazingly survived the hit-and-run. “You were lucky.”

The Clemson University doctoral student measured No. 221’s shell, took a GPS reading of the accident scene and wiggled a finger in front of the turtle’s hip joint to feel for unlaid eggs.

“She appears to be empty, so she’s already laid,” Hackney said, jotting the information onto a form. “We’re going to call that an 'unassisted crossing’ because the little devil made it almost all the way by herself. You know, I saw one the other day. Six or seven cars swerved to miss her, then a woman on a cell phone creamed her.”

The bleached skeletons of terrapins creamed in years past are scattered along the highway. They are mute evidence that female turtles try to return each spring to lay their eggs in the spot where they themselves hatched eight to 40 years previously and to the crushing fact that now a highway runs through it, carrying an average of 10,133 vehicles each day since June 1.

Some terrapins survive because they don’t cross the highway at all but are happy with a nest site near where they left the water. For others, the grass is greener on the other side of U.S. 13, or the sand sandier, or it’s just home-sweet-home. Those turtles try to cross four lanes of traffic, lay their eggs, then cross four lanes back to the water again.

Some of them are light enough on their feet, or smart enough to cross at night, or just dumb lucky, but last year 33 terrapins – about 10 percent of the estimated population on Fisherman Island – were smashed in the road.

That distressed a stevedore from Hampton Roads named Barney Fedele who, on his way to visit his mother in 2005, noticed a high number of dead turtles and stopped at the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge to ask why.

The following year, refuge employees happened across 18 dead terrapins and, in 2007, installed a silt fence along part of the road to keep turtles off the highway. It didn’t work. Succeeding years brought different types of fences that also didn’t work well enough, and this spring, a new and experimental blockade was unrolled and staked down in early May.

It is a corrugated plastic drain pipe, held in place along the margins of the marsh by steel rebar. Fedele was one of the volunteers who helped install it.

“Too many people complain about things but don’t do anything about it,” he said then.

The refuge can’t afford to install fence across the entire island until it is known which style works best. Hackney patrols the blockade by truck and on foot for about five hours every day, recording how many terrapins get past it and how many cross or are killed in unfenced areas. If she sees one crossing, she tries to help it.

Last year, in addition to the 33 that died in the road, Hackney helped 31 cross safely. Another 14 made it without assistance. So far this year, 28 have died in traffic, and she has carried 32.

Although they all look like dark moving rocks from a distance, diamondback terrapins come in many colors, from bright yellow to pale cream. Their skin is polka-dotted black and white, and white marks on their beaks look like thick lips.

“They all kind of remind me of Mick Jagger,” Hackney said. “I like seeing them, but I’d rather not see them in the middle of the highway.”

Under the gaze of two black vultures perched on a lamppost, Hackney carried a terrapin across the road, dodging two northbound cars, then waiting for a southbound tractor-trailer to blow past. The driver beeped at her; she waved.

Police officers have told Hackney that, since learning of her work, they also stop to escort terrapins across the highway, and they ticket motorists who intentionally hit turtles.

“Aww, I see one up there,” Hackney said and, as she hurried toward it, the terrapin scuttled across the northbound lanes, traffic swerving around it. It reached the median, changed its mind, turned around and crawled back into the northbound road.

Cars, pickups – safe, safe – campers, more cars – the turtle made it again to the center line – and a tractor-trailer crushed the terrapin into a bloody smudge just as Hackney reached the spot.

“Dammit,” she said, pulled on latex gloves and, after waiting for a break in traffic, collected what remained of the corpse. She took a GPS reading near a sign proclaiming “Eastern Shore of Virginia Welcome Center. You’ll Love Our Nature.”

A pickup truck pulled onto the shoulder next to her and, weirdly enough, Fedele was driving it. He asked whether the experimental blockade was protecting the terrapins.

And the answer to that question is … well, Hackney’s still looking for that answer.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com