I had to think about it for a minute. Rouseman's children are in their 20s and have long since flown the coop. Then it sank in.

"Oh, those kids," I said. "When did they leave?"

"Figure it must have been last night," Rouseman said. "Went down to the beach and they were gone."

"Didn't even say goodbye?"

"Nope, ungrateful little so-and-sos. And after all we did for them."

I thought back to that night during early summer. We had been walking on the beach-Rouseman, me, our wives-when we came across the loggerhead sea turtle. She was about the size of a coffee table and had crawled up to the edge of the dunes to dig her nest. We kept our distance and settled in to watch for a while. It was Rouseman who first noticed that something was wrong.

"It's her flipper," he said. "The left rear one. She's hurt it or something."

We drew closer and shined the flashlight. Maybe it was a shark bite. Or maybe a piece of flotsam got wrapped around it-a piece of rope, a garbage bag, fishing line-and cut off circulation. But the left rear flipper was gone. As a result, the turtle was having trouble digging her nest. She would scoop out sand with her right flipper but couldn't counter-scoop with her left. She was getting nowhere.

"I think we ought to help her out," Rouseman said.

"You mean help her dig the nest?" I said.

"Yeah," said Rouseman. "She's clearly not capable of doing it herself."

We stood there debating it for a few minutes. It was a pretty lopsided argument and I was the lone dissenter, maintaining that intervention on behalf of nature upsets certain balances that are best left alone. It didn't win me any points with the wives.

"It's not like we're talking artificial insemination or cloning here," said my wife. "We're just helping her along."

I mentioned something about Darwin and survival of the fittest. Which was stupid because Rouseman is much better versed in his Darwinism than I am.

"Darwin wrote that one-tenth of survival depends on adaptation, the other nine-tenths on luck," said Rouseman. "And this turtle just got lucky."

With that he dropped to his knees in the sand. He timed it and, after her right flipper scooped out sand, he removed an equal amount on the left side. And so it went, each of us taking turns with the digging. Remarkably, our presence didn't spook the turtle. Indeed, she seemed totally oblivious to us, driven by the urge of motherhood. She looked to be fairly old-loggerheads can live to 100-with barnacles on her mottled shell. She grunted and gasped, her hot breath creating a steamy halo, salty tears running from her eyes.

We counted the eggs as she dropped them in the hole-87 in all-and then slowly, tediously, we helped her cover them up, and watched as she crawled back to the Gulf and disappeared. Start to finish it had taken more than two hours. Rouseman had a cell phone and after a few calls he connected with the beach turtle patrol. They showed up and marked the nest and put down chicken wire to keep out predators. They said it would take about 60 days for the hatchlings to emerge.

"Today is day 57," said Rouseman when he called me. "Our kids jumped the gun."

I told him I had read somewhere that it takes 12 to 15 years for female sea turtles to reach maturity and that they always return to the beach where they were born. Rouseman thought about it for a minute. And then he said: "Well, I damn sure plan on being here to welcome them home."