Flying turtles!!

It's always been my "thing."  It seems more appropriate now that I'm a slow runner but I have always loved turtles. Favorite book as a child? Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss, of course. My friends and I stayed at La Tortuga Hotel (the turtle, in Spanish) on spring break and got turtle tattoos to match. I even have an email address with turtle in it. 

These are the presents I get.  Seriously.

Now, living in South Florida, turtles have a larger share in the spotlight. There are nesting areas that are roped off to avoid disruption, streetlights that are dimmed to help the migration back to the ocean, and hospitals to help the turtles injured. Just 15 minutes down the road from me, there's an awesome nature center called Gumbo Limbo that provides education about the surrounding marine life and nurtures turtles back to health.  One of the coolest things they do is a release back into the ocean for the public to see.  This is Lightning, the latest Loggerhead turtle to be released from Gumbo Limbo back into the ocean.

Another cool place is down in the Florida Keys called the Turtle Hospital.  With the help of boaters and fishermen, the Turtle Hospital is able to rescue many injured turtles and often nurse them back to health.  This was a big week in the news for them down here in South Florida!  A 129-lb Loggerhead turtle named Sapphire was going to fly!  That's right, Sapphire was taking to the sky, courtesy of FedEx, to her new home in California.  This poor turtle was the only two-time visitor in history to the Turtle Hospital and unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to recover enough to be released to the wild again.  It's a pretty cool story...

I have always loved turtles, but now I'm a pretty big fan of FedEx, too!

If you want to see the rest of Sapphire's journey, be sure to follow her on Twitter, @SapphiredUp or watch for updates from her new home @thelivingcoast on Instagram!!