The Consequences

Have you heard of the story of the baby Olive Ridley turtles?
The story of how they hatch out their eggs, buried in a pit along the sandy shore of the ocean.And then allow their noses and tiny limbs to make their way out of the sandiness and then towards the outside, the big big world that they they catch a glimpse of for the very first time.

After which they scramble across the sand and follow the light (reflection of the moon light on the sea)and into the water and are swept into the tide; into the new Life that awaits them.

However, it's not so simple.

On the way there, they encounter birds of prey that would catch these small hatchlings as easy food. i.e. if their eggs were not found and destroyed by some means first.



The hatchlings sometimes chase the light from the street lights, instead of the one they were supposed to follow, and end up on the roads, and get crushed by vehicles in the traffic.


All they know is that they have to follow the light, and know nothing about the consequences of chasing the wrong sort of light.



It's not all a tragic story though, because there is hope still -
  
in the form of some people who have noticed these consequences and go on turtle walks, to protect these hatchling nests. They then return when the hatchlings are meant to come out of their eggs and collect them in baskets

and release them a little away from the shore (I hear, that the female hatchlings would then return to the exact same beach approximately 17 years later to lay her eggs and she'd need to feel the sand a little before entering the water). And these people, they shine their torches into the water, and the olive ridleys faithfully follow.

In a perfect straight path towards the light, they walk- with all of their energy focussed on one thing only-as if their life depended on it.

Somehow I find this encouraging - that though :

Sometimes we do chase things without realizing the consequences.

We chase the things we think would satisfy us, but they instead crush us.

 There is hope still.
<picture credits go to Deepika D.>