Hey, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford. I'm here with Just the Zoo of Us. This is your favorite animal review podcast. I'm so excited because today I'm talking to our friend Alex Troutman. Say hi, Alex.

Hey, how are y'all?

So excited to see you and talk to you. You have like the most contagious, like, happy energy ever. So very happy to talk to you today. And so today we're going to talk about sea turtles. Before we talk about sea turtles, let's talk about you. Tell us a little bit about the kind of work that you do and how you got into it. All right, yeah.

So I'm a wildlife biologist and I kind of got into it from an early age.

I always love nature, going fishing with my uncle and brothers and dad and seeing like

red tail hawks soaring around.

That really kind of was like my spark into nature was seeing that red tail hawks sowing around that really kind of was like my spark into nature was

saying that red tail like the sun highlighting it that kind of like got me into it and then

from there it was unward and upwards I not pay attention to doing our sports because I was

looking for at center ground I would get putting in right field. I guess,

yeah, that's right field. It was good for me because that's where all the ant heels were.

So I would pay attention to the ant hills and then the ball would come flying over. I have to

hurry up and look up and run and go get it. You had your priorities in order.

Right, yes, yes.

It was passion before baseball.

But yeah, so that's kind of where I got started with watching my on the red tail hawks fly over.

And then from there, turn into a It's taking forever to like do chores,

like cutting the grass and raking leads, because I was too busy looking for things that were

in the grass or under the leaves as I was raking them and then transforming to now graduating

college and to eventually working at the zoo Atlanta and the Georgia

aquarium until now being a wildlife biologist and having worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

and on the National Park Service where I actually got my first real experience with sea turtles.

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