View from Saturday (9781439132012) by E. L. Konigsburg Page B

be blown ashore and die, do you? These are babies, Nadia. They need help.”
    â€œDad and I were going to Epcot…”
    â€œWhy do you want to go there to see Mr. Walter Disney’s Version of the World when you can see Mother Nature’s real thing?” I had to smile. Grandpa Izzy always called Disney World
Mr. Walter Disney’s Version of the World.
Then he said, “Margaret and I need your help, Nadia. So do the turtles. Sometimes one species has to help another get settled.” Grandpa was apologizing for not telling me about Margaret’s meddling. I did not know what to say.
    Dad finally spoke up, “Let Mother Nature worry about the turtles. They can take care of themselves.”
    But I knew that they could not. I said, “Let me talk to Dad, Grandpa. I will call you back.”
    After I hung up, I went into the living room. Dad was in his pajamas. Striped. I had never seen Dad sitting in the living room in striped pajamas. He said, “Don’t worry about the turtles, Nadia.”
    I explained, “The turtles will be easy to spot—so out of place, washed up on shore. The birds will eat them.”
    â€œThey couldn’t possibly eat them all.”
    â€œThose that do not get eaten will be lost.”
    â€œBut, surely, the tide will come back and carry the seaweed—and the turtles along with it—back out.” He smiled again. “What comes ashore always washes back out. That’s not a philosophical statement, Nadia. It’s a fact.”
    â€œThey will be lost at sea.”
    â€œLost at sea? The sea is their home.”
    â€œThey will be lost at sea,” I repeated.
    â€œNadia,” Dad said, “how can that happen?”
    â€œYou have to understand turtles to understand how that will happen.”
    â€œI don’t think I do.”
    â€œI told Grandpa I would talk to you.”
    My father sat on the sofa, looking out of place in his striped pajamas. He nodded, a slow, thoughtful nod, and I knew that he would pay close attention, and I knew that I could explain it all.
    â€œIt all starts,” I said, “the minute the new hatchlings scamper over the sand toward the light of the horizon. Once they reach the water, they begin a swimming frenzy. They do not eat. They just swim and swim until they reach the Sargasso Sea. That is when they stop, and that is whenMother Nature turns off the swimming-frenzy switch and turns on a graze-and-grow switch. For the next five to ten years, they will stay in the Sargasso Sea, feeding off the small sea animals that live in the floating mats of sargasso grass. Tonight when the wind blows that seaweed ashore, there will be a lot of immature turtles in it—swept along with the sea grass they have called home.”
    I paused in my narrative. I focused hard on Dad, and he focused hard on me. “Are you with me?” I asked. My father nodded, so I continued. “Here is the tragic part. Even if the tide does wash them back into the water, they will not be able to get back home because once the swimming-frenzy switch is turned off, it is turned off forever. Turtles do not have an emergency power pack or a safety switch to turn it on. So, there they are, once again at the water’s edge, but this time they are without a mechanism for swimming east. And that is why they will be lost at sea. They will want to graze. They will have an appetite, but they will not be where they can satisfy it, and they will not know how to get there because they cannot turn back their internal clock. They will not find home. They will not find food. They will starve and grow weak and be eaten.”
    My father did not once look at his watch or the clock on the table by the sofa. His listen-and-learn switch had been turned on, and his own internal clock was ticking. I studied my father, sitting on the pale gray living room sofa in his blue striped pajamas. The storm in our private lives had picked him