The bulk of these turtle-smuggling operations takes place during the late summer, when Tunisians who’ve completed their homeland holidays collect these reptiles for their journeys back to their workplaces in Europe. Managing an under-the-table payment to a corrupt authority or simply getting lucky gives them the seedy opportunity to earn extra cash selling their hard-shelled hoardings to Europeans who generally regard these rare and exotic species as mere novelties. This is the case because the lifespan of a turtle in captivity may be only a few days or years, when in the wild, they can live for several decades.