The Great Turtle Egg War

The following is a read aloud story for June 2004. This is one in a series of stories especially for Awana Clubs, homeschoolers, Sunday school classes, DVBS, mission conferences, or just reading them for fun. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others. Use them. God bless! This month I tell the story of two Culina girls and their adventures in the great Tropical Rain Forest of the Amazon River of Brasil. Certain times of the year the turtles dig deep to lay their many eggs in the hot sand and then cover the nest well, camouflaging it to prevent any creature discovering the precious eggs. Now, Who taught the mama turtle to do that? This is the story of turtles and tikes…greed and tricks…egos and eggs.

The old story teller, Douemi (Dough-way-MEE)
Missionary/ culture observer among the Culina Madirra for many years
Serving with New Tribes Mission, Sanford, FL

Orani (Oh-raw-KNEE) and Maia (My-AH) raced through the forest trail to begin the descent to the smaller brush of the Big Low. The Big Low was an old river bed that was quite wide and lower than the rest of the forest marked with stunted trees. The main river once flowed through it, but now just a clear little stream was there easily crossed on a fallen log. The girls were chattering about the up river village, the Pisideni (Pee-see-deh-KNEE), the little white monkey people, who had been recently coming through to go out to Hot Beach on the river and dig for turtle eggs.
“The Pisideni stink!”, Orani said as she marched down the trail, “And their clothes are all rags! Did you see Zequeri’s (Zeh-keh-REE’s) shirt?…it was all rips and tears and PEW it stunk like rotten fish!” The girls kept on discussing their less fortunate neighbors up the river with great cackles of laughter as they competed to see who could make the most sarcastic remark about the Pisideni.
Then they suddenly stopped. Someone was approaching. Quickly the two lithe brown bodies shimmied high up a gnarled tree by the trail and buried themselves as best they could in the branches and leaves. The approaching party was also talking quite loudly and there were more of them. As they got close to the tree one of them shouted back to those behind, “Wait until the zomarrideni (Zoe-maw-hee-deh-KNEE) get out to Hot Beach…they’ll NEVER find the turtle eggs! I made so many fake turtle nests that they’ll all be roasted in the sun by the time they find a real one!” And this brought great peals of laughter. As the Pisideni marched by under the girls, never once looking up to discover them, one of the group said, “The zomarrideni are all children of sloths!” and, again, laughter rolled through Big Low.
“Sloths! They called us sloths!” Orani said once it was safe to come down on the trail. “PEW. Could you smell them when they passed by? I had to hold my nose the stench was so bad!” The girls determined right there and then that they would go to Hot Beach and find the eggs. And they began to run to get on the connecting trail that would take them to the sandy beach.
It was the scorching dry season. Female sibore (See-bore-EH) turtles would come at night to Hot Beach and with one muscular flipper at a time scoop out a hole and fling the sand behind her. As she scooped deeper it required more work and more effort. The sand got wet and heavy, and she had to fling it above the rim of the hole she was digging. Finally, she was satisfied that the hole was the right depth and she began to drop shiny ping-pong ball sized eggs into the nest. Her instincts told her that she must cover the nest securely, so she filled the hole, tamped the sand delicately, as with loving care, added more sand on top, packed it too, then made a wide circle of disturbed sand to confuse any predators. She would finally rest in the moonlight and watch all of the other female turtles doing the exact same thing all over Hot Beach. Some time later the eggs would incubate in the hot sand and small turtles would hatch and crawl out of the hole and make their way slowly down to the safety of the river. But only a small percentage would survive! Predators loved turtle eggs and baby turtles! And, of course, so did those brown-skinned two-legged predators that had toes and fingers that could dig!!!
Maia and Orani burst out into the humid oppression of Hot Beach. The sun was so hot and the girls did not want to get any browner than they already were. But they soon could see that the Pisideni had raced around all over the beach making fake nests…and the girls dug here and there to find nothing. “Orani, come quickly! Look what I have found!” shouted Maia. And sure enough Maia had discovered a newly cut stick slanted in the sand and when she dug near it…she found where the Pisideni had stored a whole cache of hundreds of eggs. They had intended to come back later and get them. “ICCA!” (Eee-CAW!) Ours!” the girls stated again and again. Then Orani made a suggestion…”Maia, let’s fill the hole with buriti nuts! That’ll teach the stinking Pisideni to hoard our eggs!” So they raced into the jungle and soon found a buriti palm tree and gathered many, many of the golf-ball sized nuts. They made carrying baskets for the actual eggs and filled the hole with the nuts and raced back to the village anticipating the surprise the Pisideni would have when they returned for the eggs.
And so it went for the next few days. Every day people from one clan or the other would go to Hot Beach and try to find the eggs. Every day the sarcasm and name-calling seemed to get worse. And then one cool evening as Orani and Maia were laying in their hammocks trying to read their school books…proudly thinking of how they now had a school and the Pisideni did not…the village chief came up into their shelter and sat by the fire with the girl’s relatives. “Tomorrow,” he announced, “I am taking my canoe and going to Hot Beach. Some days ago my wives and my children went to Hot Beach and we buried many freshly laid eggs. I hope I have not waited too long to go and gather them”. Then he chuckled and said, “We left a big hole full of them and I put a slanted stick just where they were! I’m sure no one would ever find them!” The girls nearly fell out of their hammocks! But it was too late. They couldn’t confess. They had given the eggs from that cache to many people and eaten quite a few of the eggs themselves. But…but…what would the chief do when he found buriti nuts??? And they whispered in the dark that this must be their own secret FOREVER!!
Do you know what a “snob” is? That is a person who believes they are better than someone else. We sometimes refer to such people as being “uppity”. But, actually, they are just proud, conceited sinners. Jesus stated it correctly when He said, “The poor you will have with you always!”, but Jesus also loved the poor and less fortunate. Do you criticize and make fun of kids at your school who don’t have what you consider “nice clothes”? Or live in a house that is not up to the standard of your home? Have you ever defended the child who is being teased and tormented? Do you look for ways to be friends to them? Don’t be egotistical. That means being “stuck up” and thinking you are “big stuff”. Be ready to make friends and love and care for ALL people regardless of their social standing. Jesus did. He loved the leper as well as the lawyer. Follow His steps every day!!