Our guide, Castor, if serious when he tells us, “No camera. No flashlight. No cigarette.” It’s 10 o’clock at night, and we’ve been stumbling behind him on the beach in complete darkness for half an hour, hoping that every shadowy form is a giant green sea turtle(海龟)that has emerged from the Caribbean sea to lay eggs on the beach. My husband and I have traveled from the central highlands of Costa Rica to the western Caribbean coast, hoping to witness this in late October at the end of the nesting season. We walk behind Castor in dutiful silence, thinking about the influence we could have on a turtle’s nesting decision. Although green sea turtles can’t hear well, they have a powerful sense of smell. Strong terrible smells and lights can disturb the, and if the female turtle feels threatened, she’ll likely return to the sea to abort all 100 to 120 of her eggs—a huge sacrifice for an enered creature. Earlier that day, we had read up on threats to the turtles—harmful waste, plastic bags and fishing hocks among other things. These threats apply, however, only if baby turtles make it to the sea in the first place. We stumble farther. Then Castor stops suddenly, our small group coming to a clumsy halt behind him. With his low-beam flashlight, he draws our eyes down to the sand, churned (搅动) as if a small tractor had driven up onto the beach and headed straight forward. Castor slips away, follow the trail, and returns. “She is there,” he reports, “ her nest now. we’ll wait for her to finish and then we will see her lay the eggs.” Castor lowers his voice, bends over with his hands on his knees, and explains what the female turtle is doing: She’s using her body like a giant power drill, turning herself around and around in a circle until the top of her shell is deep within the sand. Using her powerful, leathery flippers(鳍状肢), she digs sand out around her, borrowing (掘地洞) deeper. Employing her rear flippers, she digs a neat, deep hole for the hundred or more eggs she’ll lay this evening. In two weeks, she’ll come back to this beach and lay some more. From the beach, the baby turtles may travel the Caribbean Sea for decades. Once the females mature at 20 to 30 years old, they’ll return here to lay their eggs every few years Then castor is off again. We sit silently on a big piece of wood, waiting patiently like family members outside the birthing room. Some minutes later, we get the message we’ve been waiting for: “It’s time. She is ready.” In the dark we move up the beach, wondering where she is exactly, hesitantly stepping as though we might trip over her. “Come, come close, have a look,” Castor says, and we move toward the soft red glow of his flashlight. His right hand holds the massive turtle’s left rear flipper aside so that the light shines directly into the hole, which is already filling with eggs. The turtle’s droopy(下垂的) pointed tail lifts as a soft, slipper egg slides through and drops into the hole, followed by another and another, sometimes two and three in one push, followed by a watery substance. I breathe in respect as dozens of eggs drop into the hole, recalling that only a strong few will survive, and that only 1%-3% of the females who hatch from these eggs will came back on this beach to lay their own eggs. The turtle’s tail swells one last time, then relaxes, producing nothing. Within minutes her tail flippers begin scraping sand from the sand walls around her, dragging it over the top of the eggs to completely cover them underneath her. Gradually the eggs disappear from sight, and the scraping sound of her flippers fades. Castor has slipped away again. He signals us to another spot some distance away. Unbelievably, another nest is hatching at this very moment, dozens of baby turtles desperately fighting their way to the suce, trying to drag themselves up out of the hole and to the sea. Many of them climb, with much difficulty, from the hole. It’s a process that’s gone on for two million years. I will never forget this experience and will care more about the animals in nature, as they are part of nature just as us.