Turtle-Watching

August 18, 2006 - 3:32 PM by Allison

With the ceasefire in place — for now — the summer plans of Israelis are even more focused on what summer is generally about — doing anything possible to keep the kids entertained. Like turtle-watching.

We went yesterday up to a branch of Nahal Alexander to a section called Gesher Ha’Tzavim (Turtle Bridge). Supposedly you can see very large soft shell water turtles swimming around, and if you bring food they even come out of the water to eat.

We have been there on two previous occassions to see these turtles, but we never got them to come out. We have been hearing rumors that because of pollution they have been ddecreasing in numbers and maybe there are so few left that we just don’t see them.

We figured we would try again. We went yesterday. We go out on the platform over the water to watch and we start throwing some bread in the water. It takes a moment, but all of the sudden we start seeing a bunch of nasty looking catfish (I think)and some small turtles attacking every crumb of bread we throw in. It was pretty cool and there were tons of them.

Eventually the big boys showed up. Only a few of them came, but we were not there for very long and by the time they showed up we did not have that much bread left..

It was very exciting to see the big turtles. They look weird (not really much like regular small turtles).

Here is a picture of one..

The kids wanted to grab one and take it home, but I thought that if I reached out to grab this monster he would bite my arm off!! (and this was the smaller of the three we saw!)

Share with others