The turtle with no name

When you’re a mom with two boys, you do things that would once have seemed completely out of character. Top of the list? Taking care of a turtle. I balk at calling it a pet since the boys won’t name it. They don’t feed it. Now that the new has worn off, they scarcely look at the thing as they charge past him and into the kitchen for a snack.

But I, the Queen Nurturer of man, child and beast, find myself changing out water and searching for bugs just so this scaly little reptile won’t die on my pea-green countertop.

He declines to eat the tiny creatures I leave scattered across his terrain. Maybe he’s particular—or just insulted that he is expected to eat day old beetles or flies squashed beyond recognition. He refuses to stoop to my offer of road kill. I revise my tactics.

At night, when the kids are in bed, I find myself turning on the porch light just to attract a few bugs…ones un-grotesque enough for me to maim with my hot pink fly swatter and carry into the house for his supper. Oh, the irony.

And delivering dinner straight to his jaw-clenching little mouth with a silver plated pair of tweezers is not good enough for me. I then feel compelled to watch him chomp, rip, mutilate his delicacies until he has swallowed every bite and looks up at me for more. It’s riveting. And a little twisted.

So maybe it’s no surprise that on the first day of school, when I returned to an empty, quiet house, it wasn’t my boys I sat down to write about. It was my turtle. My turtle with no name.

The turtle with no name

Who knew I had such an affinity for turtles.
Tough and strong on the outside.
Soft and saggy in the middle.

Indifferent little box turtle, captured and contained in a sad replica of his natural habitat.
Dirt from between the barns.
Dead leaves from the azalea bushes.
Broken sticks and twigs fallen from the decaying old elm out front.

Small, scared, hiding under the fallen foliage like a camouflaged soldier ready to attack…
Yet he doesn’t.
He barely moves, except to pull his head back inside his shell. Safe. Protected.

Tiny little turtle, burrowing himself into the cool of the dirt, searching for a break from the heat, from his life.

He eats not while we are watching; his privacy, he doth relish.
A flailing fly is in no danger from him. A baby beetle, begging for his last breath will be granted mercy from this peculiar creation.

When the house is quiet and I am alone, I hear him scratching. Marching through the downed brush. Valiantly scaling the dying vegetation that must seem to him like mountains, deserts, the barren landscape that is his new world.

Is he searching for sustenance? Craving companionship? Or is he desperately clawing, fighting to set himself free from his existence, this pseudo residence fashioned from an old foil baking pan.

I stop to watch him, hover over his world. He can sense my presence, stopping him in his tracks, retreating to the safety of the one place no one else can enter.

What an amazing creature, this turtle with no name. He asks for nothing. He complains not. He sustains himself by water and pure will and through the exquisite design of his flawless Maker.

Who knew I had such an affinity for turtles.

And that’s All in a day’s work!