Moving turtle eggs.

The other night I saw a painted turtle laying eggs in our volleyball court. Being only an inch deep and in the right front position, it was guaranteed that these were going to get trampled, so I decided to move them to a corner of the beach where they wouldn't be disturbed. Dad came up with the idea of digging down around the nest, and picking up the whole clump of sand, eggs and all, in one lump. So that's what we did. Dug a moat around the nest, pinned a towel around the lump to hold it together, and then slid the big square shovel under it. We dug a hole down at the beach where we've seen turtles put their nests, and carefully tucked the lump into the hole, filled the sides with sand, and pulled out the towel. For now we have some cinder blocks around it to keep the raccoons from finding it, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so once the smell of human and turtle is gone, we can remove the blocks and just let nature take its course.