Urban wildlife

Stella & I missed all the excitement at the neighborhood pub the other day. A friend of mine was there with his camera, though, & sent these photos of the box turtle he found in the parking lot. A beautiful specimen and apparently on some kind of mission, traveling obliviously across lawns and pavement and a gravel parking lot. A death-defying mission, you could say. After posing for these photos, the turtle submitted to the relocation efforts of kind-hearted pub patrons.

I've been thinking a lot about this turtle, and all the other turtles I've known. I'm afraid I've become a little bit numb with my rage at all the senseless death going on everywhere, and it did my heart good to know that somebody had bothered to try to keep this turtle off the road. Their beautiful and durable shells give them a perfect refuge from all but the most wily and persistent predators, but they are no match for cars. Plus they don't move very fast.

Looking at these pictures reminds me of a box turtle I once knew by the name of Fred; when I last saw Fred about ten or twelve years ago, he had been living for almost 30 years with this guy in my revolutionary knitting group. I think my friend felt a little bad about keeping him captive, but he was worried that Fred would end up dead on the pavement.

So Fred had his own aquarium with the kind of light he needed to keep his shell in shape and keep warm. There was a pool in it, and some plants and pretty rocks, and on one side there was a whole gallery of turtle-themed art taped to the outside of the glass for him to enjoy. He ate mostly cat kibble, with occasional bugs & stuff. He spent a few hours each day in the aquarium but was otherwise given free run of the house, much to the amusement of the cats. They loved to follow him around, but when they got too curious, he'd of course just pull inside his shell and freak the cats out.

I went over there one day to see the litter of kittens that a stray cat had showed up to deliver. They were all in a cardboard box being cute in that helpless newborn mammal kind of way. Several of us were standing around staring at them when someone said, "Hey, look at Fred!" He was moving pretty briskly, for a turtle, circumambulating the box (there's just no other word to describe what he was doing), stopping every now and again, craning his neck to try to see into the box. He seemed agitated. Worried? How to tell? My friend sat down on the floor and held Fred so he could see inside. He stared for quite a long time at the kittens. Finally he looked up at my friend, who put him down. Fred sat calmly near the box for quite a long time after that.