Box turtles are known for their tidiness and their fondness for making lists. For a box turtle, there is nothing more satisfying than crossing out the items on your list one by one at the end of a lovely day.
I originally drew this picture of Alexander, but when I held up to his aquarium glass, he made a sort of turtle grimace, which I took to mean that he was displeased, so I decided to start over. It isn't easy to please a box turtle.
On Monday I went surfing at Haleiwa in the North Shore of Oahu. It's a spot famous for big waves and happy sea turtles. The turtles are almost 1/3 the size of a Ken Tanaka, and are much better swimmers.
In California I get to surf with a lot of plastic bottles, dolphins, sea lions and pelican friends. At Haleiwa, I paddled around the surf with one very handsome sea turtle (Charlie) and we duck dived a big set of waves together.
I wanted to do a video interview of the turtle but I couldn't bring my video camera into the water. We mostly talked about waves and food. The sea turtles eat a tasty kind of seaweed called Limu. I ate some Limu ahi poke, which is tuna sashimi chunks with limu seaweed, and I understand why these turtles like to eat Limu. Charlie described the Limu in Oahu's north shore as "da most ono in da islands", but he said the algae is a little better on the leeward side of Molokai.
The North Shore is famous for it's giant waves in the winter, but it was a small day of 4-6 foot wave faces ( about baby quadruple overhead..depending on the height of the baby).
