Rosemary Douglas Lombard

Animal behaviorist and writer Rosemary Douglas Lombard specializes in turtle cognition. Her WIP, Diode’s Experiment: A Box Turtle Investigates the Human World, narrates Diode’s story and the lab’s explorations in turtle-human communication. An adaptation won the 2011 Kay Snow Award in Nonfiction. Her literary writing appears in Bay Nature, Verseweavers (prize), Work and BluePrintReview, among others. She lectures at universities, conferences, museums, and elsewhere. cheloniancognition.blogspot.com.

Diode, an eastern box turtle, has spent decades in the Chelonian Connection cognition laboratory, where she has learned to draw by sliding her beak over vertically mounted paper. She enjoys showing off her skills and burying her nose in flowers.

The Chelonian Connection laboratory is also a hot spot for poetry. Participants contributed lines to go with Diode’s cat drawing, and lab director Lombard assembled the results. A poem by Toot Tornieri was published in the premier issue of Two Bridges Review. Sisters Angel and Spin Lombard have seen their poems published in Thresholds. Angel’s work is also in Shalla Magazine, and Spin’s is in Four & Twenty and Unshod Quills. Willow Tornieri is looking forward to her first publication in Impractical Cats.