It’s cool that our visitors to the Sea Turtle Hospital can buy merchandise exclusive to our hospital by shopping in person or on-line. We have to smile when our guests from up north leave the hospital with arm loads of long-sleeved T-s, hooded sweat shirts, fleece headbands and Christmas ornaments, in July and August. They’re literally thinking cool. And it’s really cool that, despite of the economy and the sacrifices that we’re all making our supporters continue to drop those $20 bills in the donations jar day after day. You guys are the best!

OMG! The college interns are gone and we have twenty-seven sick turtles and we still have open house for a few weeks” season. Even though we released sixty fully recovered turtles from June 2008 - June 2009 those tanks barely had a chance to cool off before we started filling them up again. And the incoming sick and wounded are the most critical and fragile we’ve seen in many years. Some of the “Barnacle Bills” were so emaciated they were almost flat: not all made it. After a full summer of food, treatment and TLC a lot of these critters are still on the edge. Big mama Loggerhead, “Bogue” remains about a hundred pounds underweight even though we’re throwing as much fish at her as she’ll eat.

Kelsey Blackburn, a pre-vet and psychology student at Wake Forest, advises new interns to forget the socks and tennis shoes when working at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island, NC. Ava Bace, a student from UNC Ashville, worked for “Wildlife For Life” and knows the fine art of feeding the tired, the hurt, and the reluctanct to munch.

Volunteer and now intern “Mr. Fixit” Charlie Lynch from Springfield, PA will return to Penn State in the fall as a sophomore. Animal Science major and intern Caroline Lea returns to NC State. Flipper hugs to four Girl Scouts from Salem, VA who set up a table of sea turtle related objects. After a short presentation they offered all the items for sale and donated the entire proceeds to our hospital.