A friend and I went hiking in Bear Brook State Park last week, and as the trail wound around the shoreline of Hayes Marsh, my eyes scanned the water. I knew there were turtles in there and because I’ve always loved turtles, I really wanted to see one. But the only thing I spotted was a bullfrog…and about 10,000 mosquitoes…8,000 of which immediately swarmed us and then dive-bombed at every tiny bit of exposed flesh they could find.
Thinking about turtles reminded me of an incident that happened back in the late 1970s, when my husband and I were riding down Route 28 in Allenstown one afternoon. On the side of the road was a large black object, round and about the diameter of a vinyl LP record. My husband slowed down (there were no other cars within sight in either direction at that moment) so we could get a better look at the mystery object.
Suddenly it moved. That’s when we realized it was a huge turtle…and it was planning to cross the road, where a brook beckoned from the other side.
“Quick! Pull over!” I shouted at my husband. “That turtle will never make it across without help. The speed limit is 55 here!”
“Which means most of the cars will be zooming by at about 70,” he said as he steered the car over to the side of the road. I immediately leapt out.
Well, the ungrateful reptile not only refused to accept my assistance, it also let me know it was a snapper…a snapper with an apparent affinity for shredded human flesh, and a neck that extended like a Slinky to over a foot long.
When I saw a line of cars approaching at a rapid clip in the distance, I attempted to scare the turtle back into the grass by stomping my feet at it. When it started to retreat in that direction instead of out onto the road, I breathed a sigh of relief.
My relief was short-lived, however. The turtle decided to take a detour…directly underneath our car. I waited for it to emerge on the other side, but when it didn’t, I knelt down to see where it was. I spotted it behind the front tire on the passenger’s side. It looked pretty comfortable, as if it were thinking, “Gee, it’s so nice and peaceful under here, I think I’ll stay for awhile.”
My husband, who still was sitting in the car with the window down, was unable to see much from his vantage point.
“I saw you stomp at the turtle and make it head back to where it came from,” he said to me. “So I guess it's safe now. Come on, let's get going.”
“Um, not quite yet,” I said. “The turtle sort of got sidetracked and crawled under the car. And I think it might have decided to take a nap there.”
The look my husband gave me told me he thought I was kidding. When I didn’t laugh, he got out of the car and knelt down to look underneath it.
He stood up and frowned. “Great. I’m not about to just sit around here all day waiting for some turtle to decide when it wants to move. Besides that, we’re going to be late for my dental appointment.”
“I sure hope you’re not thinking about running over it!”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. Let’s look for a branch or a stick or something we can use to coax him out. Maybe if I find a stick, he’ll try to bite it if I poke him with, then he’ll latch onto it and I can just drag him out. Snappers are famous for their super-strong jaws.”
It sounded like a long shot to me, but I figured we had nothing to lose at that point. The closest area to us was a field, so our hunt for branches turned up nothing. My husband, however, found an old cornstalk.
“You can’t use that to move a big turtle,” I said to him as he headed back to the car with it. “It’s too flimsy.”
“It’s better than nothing,” he said.
He then stretched out on his stomach on the asphalt on the driver’s side of the car, so he could attempt to nudge the turtle out into the grass on the passenger’s side.
As I stood and watched him, I couldn’t help but laugh. Every time he shoved the cornstalk underneath the car, it came back out shorter, where the turtle had snapped off a piece.
We were so engrossed in our efforts to move the turtle, we barely noticed the state trooper when he pulled up behind us. He got out of his cruiser and stood, his hands on his hips, silently watching my husband poking the cornstalk underneath the car.
“Having car trouble?” he finally asked, probably thinking he’d seen some bad mechanics in his day, but never one who’d tried to use a cornstalk to repair a vehicle.
My husband, failing to conceal his embarrassment, crawled out and stood up. “Actually, we’re having turtle trouble,” he explained. “We pulled over to help this big snapper get across the road and now it’s decided to take a nap under the car.”
The trooper got down on one knee and peered underneath the car to verify our story. He then stood up, rubbed his chin as if deep in thought and said, “Yep. He’s a big one, all right. But I don’t think you’re going to convince him to move with only that cornstalk.”
Then, to our bewilderment, the trooper started to laugh…really hard. I mean, he acted as if he’d just been told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Sure, the situation was pretty amusing, but it definitely didn’t warrant nearly hysterical, tear-inducing laughter.
“I-I’m sorry,” he managed to utter between guffaws, “but it just dawned on me that your car is a Volkswagen Rabbit! I can’t help but think about that old fable, The Tortoise and Hare, where the slow turtle beats the fast rabbit in a race!”
I personally thought the trooper was pretty clever to come up with that analogy, but my husband’s expression told me he’d just about had his fill of turtle talk for one day.
Maybe it was the trooper’s laugh, which did kind of sound like a hyena’s, that scared (or annoyed) the turtle, but the snapper suddenly emerged from under the car and headed straight out onto the road. The trooper was swift to react, however, and dashed out to halt the approaching traffic. He stood on the center line, his arms outstretched, as the turtle leisurely strolled across the two lanes.
The trooper slowly shook is head, laughed and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
A man in the first car rolled down his window and asked, his tone filled with awe, 'What the heck is that thing?" When the trooper told him, he said, “Can’t you just carry it across?”
The trooper answered, “Not if I want to go home tonight with all 10 of my fingers!”
When the turtle finally reached its destination, cheers could be heard, and the traffic once again began to move. The trooper wished us a good day and went on his way.
“Well, we’ve done our good deed for the day,” I said to my husband as we finally climbed back into our car.
“Yeah, but now we’re over a half-hour late for my appointment,” he muttered. “And my shirt is filthy.”
“I guess the turtle defeated the rabbit again,” I couldn’t resist saying, even at the risk of causing valid grounds for a divorce. “Just like in Aesop’s old fable.”
When I later related our adventure to one of my friends, she said, “They should put up one of those 'Turtle Crossing' signs in that area as a warning,”
Her husband looked at her and rolled his eyes. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard! What good would signs do? The turtles wouldn’t know that’s where they’re supposed to cross. They can’t read!”
Give me strength…
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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