Nature calls

And we must answer

Not the actual turtle in this story. Your results may vary.

Reconstruction continues apace in my new-old house and we are at the point now where the professionals have arrived, and I am left with filling up contractor bags with trash.

It’s OK. I’m pretty good at it.

Yesterday, I was dragging debris from the backyard to the front so Jason, the guy with the truck, could take it all away. He’s already removed a load that weighed just shy of a ton. This is an even bigger load but via text, Jason suggests he can play Tetris and make it all fit. I suggest I’ll videotape it and tell all my friends, if he does.

How can such a small house generate so much trash? I’d post a photo but it’s horrifying that the hedge in front of my house is made of fencing, posts, and garden-variety debris. The neighbors have been unfailingly polite, but yeesh.

Along about mid-afternoon, I went to throw a post onto the pile and nearly stepped on what I thought was a piece of moss-colored trash I hadn’t thrown far enough, but nope. It was a snapping turtle. A big one.

The discovery of a snapping turtle is news that must be shared, so I ran in to tell the men working on the kitchen that I’d just seen this prehistoric tortuga, and suddenly, we three were all 8 years old. One of the men stayed on task, and the other came out with me, put his hand over his mouth at the size of the thing, and said quietly that the turtle needed to go back into the water. Of course he was right. He and I discussed this only briefly, and since I had gloves on, I said I’d do it.

Turtles, when provoked, actually move pretty fast, and as soon as I touched its shell, this one shot under the trash hedge. We managed to get the thing out from under the wire fencing, and I bent to pick it up to get it across the street to the lake.

Cecil, who is far friendlier than my turtle visitor.

Reader, do not let cartoon turtles confuse you. This one did not want me to carry it, and it proceeded to try to claw the bejesus out of me. One claw made contact with my arm, and I dropped the thing, hard, on the street.

A smart person would have stepped back and assumed the turtle could figure out how to get out of the road, but I am not that person. Instead, I picked it up again, and got it across the street on a dead run. I was trying to calm it down with soothing tones, but that didn’t much help and I didn’t much mean it, anyway.

Right then, a guy named Eddy, Who Knows Turtles, pulled his truck over and showed me how to pick the thing up (toward the back of the shell where the flailing claws can’t touch you, plus you should hold the turtle vertical, head up). It made the weirdest grunting sound, but we walked it to the lake and then watched it swim away.

This is egg-laying season, Eddy said, and I have no reason to doubt him. I should wash that cut, he said, and I did though it is pretty superficial and hard to distinguish among all the other cuts on my arms. He said he once accidentally shot a turtle with an arrow, and a few days later, found the thing with the unbroken-off arrow still in it, still alive. That put him on the path to learn everything he could about the species.

I never knew there was that much to know, but yesterday was a good day because I learned something: Turtles are assholes.