It’s always time to watch out for turtles

I usually reserve my annual watch-out-for-turtles column for the spring, but I recently noticed that the Center for the Inland Bays installed new warning signs on Route 1, so here I am telling drivers to watch out for turtles – when they’re on the roads five months from now.

Every year, from the end of May to the end of July, female terrapins living in Coastal Delaware’s Inland Bays lay their eggs. Many of the turtles dig a hole for their clutch of eggs in the soft sands of the bay beaches. However, there are also a bunch that attempt to cross Route 1 to lay their eggs in the dunes on the ocean side of the highway.

Dune fencing, with black fabric attached across the front to close the gaps, has been installed along much of the highway’s bayside edge to deter crossings, but some of the terrapins still find a way through. To help protect the turtles that do make it through, four warning signs were installed between Dewey Beach and Fenwick Island in the early 2000s. Two are north of the Indian River Inlet on the southbound side, while the other two are south of the inlet on the northbound side.

Lisa Swanger, CIB outreach and education director, said the new signs were installed just before the holiday season. The old signs were beginning to show their age and needed to be replaced, she said.

The biggest difference – and the reason it caught my attention – is a total change in design. Gone is the artistic rendering of a terrapin with a warning to watch out for turtles. The sign now features a photograph of a real turtle and tells motorists that turtles are crossing April to August.

The new signs have April to August on them to give the turtles a bit of a buffer, said Swanger. The center is hoping the photograph is more impactful and helps decrease collisions, she said.

Another change is that the old signs were taken down each fall and then reinstalled in the spring. The new signs are year-round, so there’s a regular reminder, said Swanger.

Cotton field returns

For the second time in recent memory, a cotton field has been planted on 2 acres of farmland off Route 16, about halfway between Ellendale and Greenwood. The field is located on the corner of Webb Farm Road, and is one small portion of the M.J. Webb Farms operation.

The crop, typically associated with states farther south, was planted in the field for the first time in 2017. Cape Gazette co-founder and Publisher Emeritus Dennis Forney wrote about it in his column after coming across the field in early 2018. I’ve been keeping my eye on it ever since and, just like the turtle warning signs, I noticed it in my travels recently.

Back in 2018, Mona Steele, who is a part of the farming operation, said the crop was planted as an experiment because there was some seed available. She said people stopped for pictures and sometimes took stems because the cotton field had captured people’s curiosity.

Steele said the field was planted this time around for similar reasons – the seeds became available and there was time. There’s not always time to plant the seeds because the guys are too tired after getting the farm’s real crops in the ground, she said.

“They just planted it as a conversation piece,” said Steele.

This time around, the cotton didn’t grow as well, said Steele. It was planted late and Delaware is a little too far north for it to grow too well, she said.

Motorists still occasionally stop for photos and people still pick the stems, but for the most part it’s limited, said Steele.

“I think most people drive right by it before they realize what it is,” said Steele.

Joke of the Week

National Bagel Day is Thursday, Jan. 15. My very first Choppin’ Wood featured a bagel-adjacent joke – Why do seagulls fly over the sea? If they flew over the bay, they would be bagels. Here’s a joke that’s actually about bagels and also a bit timely since its an election year. As always, send jokes to cflood@capegazette.com.

Q: Why did the bagel lose the election?

A: He was the victim of a schmear campaign.