Kept 'seventy'? It is the number everybody reaches for, and seventy people really did take the shifts, but a count is the first thing to go and the five has room for who was saved instead. Kept 'lights' or 'beach'? That is what the turtles were being saved from, and the sentence already tells you. Kept 'night'? That is when, not what.
This one really happened. Torre Guaceto is a marine reserve on the Adriatic coast of Puglia, between Ostuni and Casalabate. More than seventy people, residents and holidaymakers, took the shifts on the sand from the middle of August until the twenty-first of September, sitting with the loggerhead nests. One of them, Marco, is nine. The danger is not foxes or gulls. A hatchling heads for the brightest thing it can see, and on that coast the brightest thing is the lights of the road and the beach clubs rather than the sea, so it walks inland. Five of the ten nests they watched came through, and 229 turtles reached the water.
Every word, accounted for
SeventyHow many took the shifts, and the number everybody keeps. A count is the first thing to go.
volunteersWho. Not rangers and not a charity’s staff: people who live there and people who were on holiday.
tookGoes with turns.
turnsHow they did it. Shifts, one after another, all the way through.
onA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
sandWhere they sat.
throughA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
nightWhen. Hatchlings come out in the dark, which is the whole problem.
andA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
savedWhat they did.
229How many reached the water. The number that counts.
ofA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
babyHatchlings, small enough to sit in a palm. A grown turtle does not need saving from a street lamp.
turtlesThe thing itself.
thatA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
beachGoes with lights.
lightsWhat they were saved from, and the strongest wrong word here. A hatchling walks at the brightest thing it can see.
wereA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
pullingWhat the lights do to them.
towardsA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
roadWhere the lights would have taken them instead of the sea.