Friday, April 15, 2011

dead turtles and a half shell

About two weeks ago I found some pieces of broken turtle shell.  I decided to bring them home and wash those guys off.  Adopting a Native American attitude, (as opposed to my Naive American attitude), I decided that I should not let these jewels of nature go to waste.  I already occasionally sit Indian-style, so what the heck- Why not integrate some of their other cultural practices into my repertoire?  I went to college.  I should be well-rounded, right?



At this point, I feel I must take a side path right now and detail my brief history with turtles:  My interest in turtles and turtle shells goes way back.  As a little tyke, I would string bacon onto a hook and catch red-eared sliders and then bring them home and set them "free" in my backyard.  Just thinking of that now makes me shudder.  Probably a decade later, I found a complete box turtle shell that was entirely empty.  How did the lil' guy escape from his physical and possibly mental and/or emotional shell?  I'm guessing we'll never know.  But just in case it was an accident, I took the shell home and left a note in its place with directions to my house where he could come retrieve it at a later date should he wish.  He never came.  And it is a good thing, because one day when my roommate Dad was cleaning out the garage, he decided to double KO me by not only throwing out the shell, but also the statue of a frog with flowers painted over it which was where said shell had reposed for a couple of years.  Fast forward to yesterday.  I stumble upon a baby red-eared slider the size of those miniature pancakes that are sometimes called "silver dollars."  Because of his precarious position in an open field, I picked him up and carried him back to the water, only to accidentally entangle him in some seaweed.  I grabbed a stick and liberated him so he wouldn't get swallowed by a whale or anything.  This concludes my brief history with turtles.

Veering back on track, how exactly does this relate to the present?  Today while searching for dragonflies, (and successfully catching two, with right AND left hands), (this deserves its own note entirely), I saw a white, bone-like remnant floating in the water.  Could this be a shell?  After prodding it with a nearby stick, I quickly drew the conclusion that it was not.  It was styrofoam.  Inconsiderate prick whoever you are that litters.  I hate the prick but can I truly hate that prick?  I ask this because it is through that piece of floating trash that I saw a gleam of red in the shallow water.  What was it?  You may remember, reader, that the word red appears earlier in this entry.  Twice.  "Red-eared slider."  And holy smokes, folks, that is exactly what it was.  It was the red ear of a dead, moss-covered turtle that had sunk to the low depths of the periphery of the little pond, or as they say in Spanish, pondita.  

For a second time in my life, I have been blessed with the opportunity to own a complete turtle shell.  I extracted the turtle corpse with a Y-shaped stick that I had the good fortune of finding directly next to me.  When a turtle dies, his soul remains, and that soul, while not visible, takes the form of an odor.  Due to its presence, I opted to leave the specimen in some bushes in hopes that an avian fellow might feast on his flesh and leave me with the treasure that is his armor.  Is this how history will run its course?  I can only hope so.  

What can we learn from this?  All I know is that after being beguiled by what I thought was a turtle shell, I actually stumbled upon a verifiable turtle shell.  The imposter led me to the poster.  It led me to the genuine.

Have an awesome day!

1 comment:

  1. there must be a lot of naked turtles running around those parts.

    ReplyDelete