Bloggin' Umholtz

Meet Turrtle

I’m Back! Did you miss me?

What a week. I left home at 5AM on Tuesday and got back last night at 9PM. Put 700 miles on my new (used) Ford Escape. Next week is shaping up to be just as crazy. After that I get a two week vacation…sort of.

If you remember, a while back I told you about my Meniere’s disease and the options that the doctors offered. I chose the one that requires cranial surgery. SO, on the 20th of March I get to have my head opened up…boy are they in for a surprise. My friends are very concerned about this procedure. They feel that with the size of the vacuum between my ears the entire operating room could get sucked in, once they crack me open. Some even feel it could affect the time -space continuum. So if your watch starts running backwards on the 20th you’ll know whom to blame. The really bad part is I’ll have to stay in the hospital for a week and then stay at home another week. But enough about me, without further delay I present to you the image of Turrtle (Yep, that’s his name.) and his sad but true story.

Turrtle was just an innocent painted turtle, minding his own business, getting some sun one spring day when the evil hand of the Vice Chairman of Wildlife for the N.P.D. & S. reached down and plucked him from his wilderness home. Turrtle hissed at him. The V.C. laughed a hideous laugh as he deposited him into the darkness of his backpack and headed for home. Turrtle was destined to join numerous other unlucky creatures that had met their match with the V. C.

Turrtle, who at the time of procurement was all of about four inches long, was unceremoniously deposited into a 10 gal aquarium in my son’s bedroom. It sat alongside other glass and wire containers that at any given time might hold frogs, crickets, sharks (littly ones) snakes, tadpoles, spring peepers, etc. It was for Turrtle that the V.C. conceived of the notion of a Turtle trail.

In time, as Turrtle grew, he was moved to a 30 gallon aquarium and given all the comforts of home. He was fed live goldfish and tadpoles and the occasional frog or minnow. If he got ill, it was off to the vet, but my son longed to give him a more natural home in our backyard.

One day, why turtle was getting his exercise, (My son took him for walks in the yard. No, no leash.) I casually mentioned that if a natural habitat was what was lacking, he could return Turrtle whence he came. “No,” I was told, “Turrtle no longer knew how to fend for himself.” Evidently he would not survive in the vast wilderness from which he was so violently plucked. I was pretty sure this wasn’t true, having observed Turrtle’s lightning fast jaws in action on unsuspecting goldfish a number of times. I let the subject drop.

At the same time, The Vice Chairman of Horticulture and I had taken an extreme liking to our original pond and would spend time daily sitting by it, feeding the fish, watching the flowers bloom and enjoying the sound of the waterfall. It was decided another, much larger pond, would not be a bad idea, and if we were going to do that, well we might as well have a turtle trail between the two, don’t you think?

Sigh, all I ever wanted to do was play with my trains.

To be continued.