Turtles USA – rebelbreeze

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Skimming through some of the material posted on the internet today as “breaking news”, I came across items under the categories listed above.

To take the first, a car driver on Interstate 95 highway in Florida was stunned by an object that flew through her windscreen and struck her on the head. Luckily for her and her mother who was a passenger, the woman managed to guide the car to the roadside where her mother summoned assistance.

A man who stopped to help was surprised to find a turtle among the broken glass inside the car but not as surprised as both women.

The media report speculated that the turtle was probably crossing the road and got knocked into the air by another vehicle.

Though there was a lot of blood as is often the case with a scalp wound, the woman was not badly injured. “I swear to God this lady has the worst luck of anything,” the daughter told the 911 operator as she tended to her injured mother, according to the report. Her daughter will no doubt remember those words of comfort for a long time.

What about the turtle? According to a Port Orange police officer, the turtle was uninjured apart from some scratches on its shell and was released into some local woods (where it has no doubt gained legendary status already among the local wildlife; hopefully the woods were in the direction in which it had been headed, so it did not have to cross the road once more).

In this part of the world we tend to think of turtles as those big marine animals or, for some, as little stripey shellback reptiles kept in aquaria. There are actually four species of native land turtles in Europe, which we call “tortoises”, found mostly around the Mediterranean and at one time it was not unusual to have one as a pet in Ireland, even at loose in the garden, where dogs, cats and other predators eventually learned the uselessness of attacking them. Sometimes they survived winters by hibernation and lived on for years, becoming quite accustomed to their owners, extending their heads out of their shell to accept bits of lettuce from people, etc. Perhaps the expression of a shy person “emerging from their shell” comes from such instances.

The cute little stripey ones in the aquarium if they lived could grow to a similar size as their land cousins but unlike European tortoises, were carnivorous. There are seven European species of which two have been introduced but none indigenous or large-scale colonisers here or in Britain (yet, at any rate – but see concern about the “Florida Turtle” invasion).

These animals in general on land or in water when fully grown are about a foot long at most but the shell adds considerable weight.

The United States is home to more species of tortoises and freshwater turtles (which we call “terrapins”), along with marine turtles than any other country in the world – 57 of the world’s 320 currently recognized species. A handful of the turtles of the Florida state are land-dwellers and like most land-dwellers, have on occasion to cross those avenues of death: roads and motorways. Which is why predators and scavengers regularly patrol these for the motor vehicle-impact corpses strewn along them.

In areas where deer might be expected to be encountered crossing the road, or even in areas near airports, traffic signs warn of the possible danger of accidental impact. Can we now expect flying turtle warning signs in Florida?

SINN FÉIN AND THEIR VOTER DATABASE

Shock and horror greeted the news that the Sinn Féin political party has a voter database. Really, how could they! Yes, they keep track of who voted for them so they can call them out for a repeat vote when they need to. Of course, most political parties do that but … but … this is different!

Actually, SF are probably emulating Dublin Fianna Fáil in this respect – it was said years ago that a Dublin FF Councillor could name his voters and that a FF T.D (parliamentary representative) could name the streets in their constituency where the majority voted for them. And since SF are emulating FF in so many other ways, why not? As one of the party’s policy advisors Éoin Ó Broin remarked also, they are “a professional party” – yes indeed.

Eoin Ó Broin TD, SF spokesperson on Housing answering press questions (*photo: Gareth Chaney/ Collins*)

The next horror revelation was not only that SF had such a database but that they had removed it from its usual location and lodged it somewhere else – Serbia! However this turned out to be a complete invention based on the fact that one SF member was married to a Serb. Really? A whole scandal was built on that?

So if not Serbia, where is that database now? In Germany, boss of the EU, it is rumoured, though Ó Broin declined to say. Well that’s alright then. But where was it before? In Britain, it turns out, from where SF moved it due to the UK’s Brexit. The state whose invaders Irish people have been fighting for eight-and-a-half centuries and which is still in military occupation of one-sixth of our land. Of course, no worry there for our political class and media – but Serbia! Thankfully it was never there.

POSSIBLY EXTENDED LOCKDOWN

It is reported that Leo Varadkar, the Tánaiste (like Prime Minister in Irish government) said publicly that he is not as confident as he was recently about the pace of relaxation of restrictions.

Those who are hostile to Varadkar and his party, or even the whole Government Coalition may let forth an expletive while the vast majority who are sick of restrictions on so many levels of normal life may groan in despair. But Varadkar is right to be cautious.

He has been made so, he says by the state’s experience in December, when the Government ignored their medical advisors and strong statements from left-wing TDs and, under pressure from commercial interests, relaxed the restrictions in the run-up to the Christmas period. A spike in rates of Covid19 infections and death rates a few weeks later was the result.

Currently infection rates in the state have fallen to the lowest level since October last year (i.e before the disastrous decision to relax restrictions) but even a composite table of a number of agencies’ predictions envisages a possible fall to 1,558 cases a week or 222 cases per day by May 15th. However that is still high enough and really the way to go is what has been advocated by left-wing TDs, which is a zero-level target. In a capitalist system that will not be the choice of the Government but rather one of managing the number of sick and tolerating the number of dead within “acceptable limits”. But hopefully the Government will at least wait until the vaccines are widely available and being administered, with testing stations throughout the state, before they risk any further relaxations of the restrictions.

We do not wish to return to the climbing rate of infection and hospital cases of earlier this year, nor do our hospital staff need any such repeat. And France and India have given graphic evidence of the penalties of too-early lifting of restrictions, if our own experience has not been enough.

End.