This from the Old First Blog by Pastor Meeter.

The turtles are up. They have wakened from their winter slumber, and they are swimming in the Lake in Prospect Park.

I
don’t know this species yet. This is my first spring at this end of the
Park. They are smaller than our turtles at the lake in Ontario.

They
swim just under the surface. But they stick their heads out of the
water in that peculiar turtle way, shy and subdued, their eyes and
nostrils showing. Once you spot them you can make out their shells
behind them, right beneath the boundary of water and air.

I
wonder where these turtles lay their eggs. It’s wonderful to me that
they survive against the odds. Our Canadian turtles are larger than
these, and when they lay their eggs, they make their laborious journey
up hill to a patch of gravel behind our cottage, dig their holes with
their hind feet, and lay them their. More labor. Turtles in labor.

And
then every night, the raccoons come and dig out the eggs. How any
survive to hatch and return to the lake is a mystery to me. For a
couple weeks after laying their eggs, the turtles keep station just off
shore, swimming back and forth in front of the cottage. Are they
sending signals to their eggs? Are they willing them to hatch and find
their way to the lake? Don’t they know what the raccoons have done? Are
there any eggs still left? How is it possible that there still are
turtles in our lake?

There are turtles in Prospect Park. And
there are certainly raccoons. You can hear them at night, chuttering in
the trees just inside the fence. They feast on the garbage left in the
cans along Prospect Park Southwest. If I thought this food was enough,
and that they didn’t need to go after turtle eggs, I would be showing
an ignorance of raccoons.

And yet the turtles survive. They seem
to have worked out a plan that works for them, against our better
judgment. And they have stuck to it."