BOOK REVIEW

I found Osha Gray Davidson's Fire in the Turtle House to be the single most emotional book I have read in my entire life. I literally could not go a page without a tear trickling down my face. When I was young, I "adopted" a sea turtle by paying for it to be tagged. I named her Snaps, and I always wondered what happened to her. It has been ten years and I figured she had passed away. This book made me realize that there is a great chance she was diseased with fibropapillomatis, or FP. This disease, with the cause unknown, causes many tumors containing leeches to affect sometimes the entire body of a sea turtle. What scared me was that prior to reading this book I considered myself relatively knowledgeable about sea turtles; however, I had never heard of FP. The shred of hope is that there are people who dedicate their life to the cause. There is even a turtle hospital dedicated to surgically helping turtles diseased with FP, as well as those injured by fishing equipment, etc. I cannot help but hate mankind for killing them for food and leather. This concept opened a discussion in my head. What was wrong about killing a turtle for meat but not a chicken? Both are God's creatures. I think the author does a fantastic job of conveying the rarity, beauty, and fragility of sea turtles. I feel honored to be a sea turtle lover because the author writes that lovers of cold-blooded animals are far. The author made me then realize how the Earth is mostly composed of oceans, and that the biodiversity will be significantly affected by potential extinction. Although no species of sea turtles have become extinct yet, I can only pray that they will not turn out like the sea cow. Although I understand that early settlers in America were extremely limited with food, it is still a struggle for me to forgive them for eating sea turtles as a method of survival and increased health. The author does a fantastic job of putting the issue into a historical context that really made me reevaluate my morals and that of mankind. Overall, this book was extremely well written and interesting. It was chock full of description and scientific terms and statements did not overpower the power. This is an extremely important book for people to read and I think even someone with the heart of a rock would be touched by it.