TAMPA TRIBUNE (Florida) 16 June 03 Turtle Lovers (Jim Tunstall)
Gainesville: Oliver has a pretty cozy arrangement.
His humans, Ken Dodd and Marian Griffey, keep his pond in immaculate shape.
The household's four rescued cats usually give him a wide berth.
He feasts on four catfish fillets twice a week.
He even has his own pets: a trio of goldfish.
``They've learned to stay away from the eating end of him,'' says Dodd, 55, a research zoologist who works for the U.S. Geological Survey and moonlights as an unsalaried associate wildlife professor at the University of Florida.
Dodd found the feisty alligator snapping turtle while on a 1985 research trip in Alabama.
He found Griffey on a blind date arranged through Dick Franz, a former UF researcher and his Egmont Key mentor.
Franz's sister got them together in mid-1995, shortly before former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in a budget battle with President Clinton, shut down portions of the federal government, which left Dodd and others with some time on their hands.
The Dodd-Griffey courtship lasted four meetings plus some letters and phone calls.
``We got married one minute after midnight on Jan. 1, 1996,'' Dodd says.
``It seemed like a good time to have a party. We got married on a dock in the middle of a lake, with frogs and sand hills in the background.''
That summer, with government still frozen in political amber, they spent their honeymoon along Alaska's Inside Passage, including some time in Denali National Park.
The next year, Dodd took his new bride to Egmont Key, off the southern tip of Pinellas County in the Gulf of Mexico, where she acquired his insatiable thirst for knowledge about Oliver's kinder, gentler cousins: box turtles.
Dodd and Griffey are wild about them.
There are dozens scattered around their house and yard.
They have Asian, Mexican and Gulf Coast varieties, but Florida box turtles are their favorites.
``How could you not love that face?'' asks Griffey, 48, an abuse counselor and gifted poet whose works often speak of her beloved creatures.
``They're like little jewels beneath the tree when you find them'' in the wild.
End Of A Project
Until about a year ago, Dodd and Griffey were more than just landlords to a few dozen turtles at their Gainesville home.
They were their champions, researching their lives and habits, spending countless hours crawling through the underbrush at Egmont Key, cooing and coaxing the turtles to survive and thrive. After- hours, the couple lived in quarters that at first had no indoor plumbing or air conditioning.
Not that it mattered to these lovebirds.
Each had a childhood fascination with turtles.
And their passion for them, along with their relationship, was cemented with their work at Egmont Key, an island of more than 300 acres with sizable populations of gopher tortoises and box turtles, among other critters.
The key, once the home of a military fort and prison, now is a joint state park and federal refuge.
In the latter case, Egmont is managed through the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge, about 70 miles north on the Hernando-Citrus county line. The refuge also includes Kings Spring and Crystal River, which provide homes to more than 300 endangered West Indian manatees, whose plight overshadows most other species.
But not for folk like Dodd.
He came to Florida in 1984 but didn't start working with Egmont Key's box turtles until 1991.
He counted, measured and marked them, learning a great deal about their habits.
That ended a year ago.
``In the past, we [U.S. Geological Survey employees] gave priority to our funded projects and could handle volunteer work on the side,'' Dodd says. But then the agency ``said we only could work on funded ones, and since funding sources are limited, we haven't been able to find any [to study Egmont's turtles], and we haven't been back.''
He says there's still much to learn.
``We've found hundreds or thousands of juveniles, but only one confirmed nest.''
Another mystery: ``How did they get there and how long ago?'' he asks.
``We don't know.''
Maybe we never will, he suggests, although he's convinced more research would answer many questions.
Poetic Wonderment
Griffey was hooked on the key's idyllic charm and wildlife from the start.
``I wonder, when turtles sleep, do they dream about tomorrow or merely rest a moment in the midst of today?'' she wrote in a poem called ``Cycles.''
The lack of creature comforts didn't seem to bother them.
``Marian and Ken are dedicated environmentalists, and we were lucky to have them,'' says former park manager Bob Baker, now manager at Paynes Creek Historic State Park.
``Ken came here at his own expense. It was going to be two years. Eight years, five or six research papers and a book [`North American Box Turtles: A Natural History'] later, they were done.''
Difference Of Opinion
During that time, Dodd had a belly-to-belly run-in with former refuge manager Cameron Shaw.
In that respect, he has company.
``If somebody worked there, and Cam didn't have a run-in, it would have been an exception,'' Baker says, chuckling.
The 1997 confrontation occurred when Shaw had a chance to commandeer his agency's Hydro-Ax, a 16-ton slicer and dicer that would have gotten rid of the island's pesky Brazilian pepper plants and Australian pines, thereby helping native plants dig in deeper.
The trouble is, it probably would have gotten rid of many of the island's 2,000 box turtles and 850 gopher tortoises.
Dodd got his hackles up, and a flood of faxes and telephone calls later, Shaw gave up the plan.
The machinery's ``physical impact was a major concern ... [because] the density of the turtle and tortoise population was too great,'' Baker says. ``There were a lot of good intentions, but it was not necessarily thought through. ... It would have killed a lot of them.''
Current refuge manager Jim Kraus says reptiles in general might not get the respect they deserve.
``Our primary responsibilities [at Egmont Key] are managing the migratory birds and brown pelicans,'' he adds.
``There's also a sizable number of nesting sea turtles.''
When it comes to box turtles, ``are they protected? Not that I'm aware of,'' he says.
``And to my knowledge, they're not being considered for [federal] listing.
``We generally don't favor single-species protection, but there are exceptions, like Crystal River and the manatees.''
Indeed, Dodd says, box turtles aren't endangered.
``But they're declining everywhere.''
He worries about Egmont Key's future.
He and Griffey are concerned about vandalism and habitat loss.
``And if they don't do something about erosion, they're not going to have an island,'' Dodd says.
Next to that threat, their beloved turtles are their greatest concern.
``When it comes to manatees and turtles,'' Dodd says, ``which do you think is going to get the money?
``Egmont is a national wildlife refuge, not just a historical refuge.
``Turtles and snakes need protection, too.''
His wife adds: ``We found dehydrated turtles, ... and a refuge person said, `Who cares?'
``Well, we do. They're a unique natural resource.''
BOX BYTES:
The Florida box turtles on Egmont Key:
· Are called box turtles because they can withdraw their head and legs, then seal themselves inside their shells.
· * While originally an aquatic species, they now live on land and are found throughout the state.
· * Can't swim, but can walk the bottoms of bodies of water or, in some cases, do a version of the dog paddle.
· * Can live to be 50 to 70 years old.
· * If female, mature in seven or eight years and can lay one to five eggs once, twice or, in rare cases, three times a year.
· * Eat insects, fruit and, occasionally, dead animals.
· * Like shady, wooded areas, which have organic moist soils in which to forage and escape heat, cold and drought. After a prolonged dry spell, they love to soak in the key's old ditches.
· * Sometimes live temporarily in gopher burrows, but tunnel through the leaf litter, moist soils and Australian pine needles at the ground's surface. There is no entrance to where they are.
· * Lose significant numbers to such predators as gulls, crows and herons, especially during the nest juvenile stages when the turtles are soft and vulnerable. Humans - through vandalism, accidents and removal as pets - are another primary predator. Smaller and slower turtles can be killed by fire ants. Source: Ken Dodd, research zoologist, U.S. Geological Survey
Inside Information
Zoologist Ken Dodd and his wife, poet Marian Griffey, can get downright passionate when it comes to box turtles and U.S. Geological Survey policy that has separated them from their beloved Egmont Key reptiles.
There's so much left to learn, Dodd says. ``When turtles sleep, do they dream about tomorrow?'' Griffey wrote.
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