Apparently, the baby turtles had just hatched from a nest near the sand dunes and were distracted by the streetlight. There was no moon on that dark night to illuminate the sea for the hatchlings, therefore they were confused and headed for the first light they saw thinking it would lead them to the ocean. When they approached the back of our house, they were again distracted by our porch light That is when they stumbled upon my younger brother.

Their little flippers never ceased paddling -- even when the three of us scooped them up in our hands. They seemed so fragile and helpless as they scrambled in different directions all across the yard. Of course we pleaded to keep "just one," but our wise mother explained to us that the turtles could only survive in the ocean. My badly shaken brother slowly calmed down once he realized that these aggressive sea creatures would not hurt him and that they desperately needed our help. We gently collected them in our beach buckets and trudged down to the water's edge to release them.

After we carefully laid each one of those determined turtles in the shallow water, we turned around and headed back to the house, only to discover that we were being followed by the turtles. Now why would they follow us back to the house? Didn't they know that this was the ocean?

We were still picking up turtles when my father came home from work. My mother told him to get a flashlight and go stand in the water. Well, he rolled up his pants and waded out about knee high and held that flashlight over the water. We picked up all of those turtles again and put them back into the water, but they crawled out again.

This time my mother advised my father to get his "baggies" on, go out to deeper water, and take a bigger flashlight. He obediently did just that, pretending to be the moon for those turtles and illuminating the water. Now the misguided hatchlings were able to swim to deeper water and they did not return to the beach.

It was a wonderful experience to hold a live baby turtle in my hand and to guide it to the sea, enabling its survival. It took several hours to complete this task because there were so many turtles. We had to pick up each one two and three times when they kept crawling back to the beach. This event gave me the idea for a children's story that I wrote for my daughters.

Over 30 years later, another rescue opportunity was repeated for us last summer in '98. My teenage daughter, my "little" brother, his wife and children, and I shared the adventure of rounding up disoriented hatchlings and taking them to the sea. Again, there was no moon that evening and the hatchlings crawled toward a street light. It was amazing to find the baby turtles half a mile away from the nest and heartbreaking to see others being carried away by the ghost crabs. Their determination and energy is to be admired. They can only survive up to three days before finding the sea.

I like to believe that perhaps these baby turtles hatched from the eggs laid by one of the turtles that we saved over 30 years earlier. It is a fact that some sea turtles will return to their birthplace 25 to 30 years later to dig a nest in the sand and deposit their eggs. Three or four adult turtles came ashore in front of our house every summer and laid eggs. We always looked for their tracks first thing in the morning and did not play near the nest site.

What rewarding and unforgettable experiences for my family!