It's Not Nice To Fool With Mother Nature

Saturday was not a day hot enough to make the devil sigh. Nor a day dark enough to make Nancy Kerrigan wail, "WHYYYYYY?" It was, however, a day humid enough to make a guy with a horse face, big teeth, pointed nose, and flared nostrils think twice about mugging an old lady for a marble rye to send up several floors on a fishing line to a guy who looks like Humpty Dumpty with a melon head.

Thunderheads with tops as brilliant white as a soap opera heartthrob's teeth covered the sky, presenting their bruised-purple bottoms, huddled together like sheep sensing a wolf's scent on the wind. Oh. Heh, heh. I said bruised purple bottoms!

I had several errands to run. A stop at Save A Lot only made me cranky, what with insolent children running wildly about the store, not even having the decency to orbit their mother's cart like a distant dwarf planet obeying the last vestiges of gravitational pull.

The cemetery was my next stop. I know my mother would enjoy the fact that she actually has a drive-thru plot for my convenience, right at the edge of the gravel, a mere 10 feet from the road. Still, I DID pull over to spend a few moments with her memory. I had to leave, though, because the weeping cherub statue, with its head laid on its arm across its knees, was simply too sad a sight for me bear. I don't recall seeing that statue amongst the flowers and plaques and garden stones at the funeral. So I had to move on. Because what better thing to do with eyes full of tears than drive a two-and-a-half ton Chevy Tahoe down two-lane blacktop?

I had recovered considerably by the time I hit the turtle guy. Okay. I didn't actually hit him, in the sense of making contact and sending him in a parabola from my bumper to the pavement. I mean that I caught up to the area where he was driving on the road in front of me. Or should have been.

What is with these people around here stopping right in the middle of the road? AND getting out of the car, while leaving their door wide open? Uh huh. That's what the Turtle Man did. I had no idea what was going on. I was on the outer road, with a 45 mph speed limit, driving 44 mph. I saw a car in the road up ahead of me, going slower. No. It was stopping, I guessed at the upcoming stop sign. No. It was stopping. In. The. Middle. Of. The. Road.

I stopped to see what was going on. Car trouble? Turtle Man got out. Left the driver's door open. Walked around front. I waited for him to pop the hood. Or motion me around. Nope. He went on across the front of his old Land Rover. Oh, I thought. He must have a flat tire on that side. Nope. Turtle Man bent over. I was not waiting around any longer. I passed him, around that hanging-open door. Just in time to see him pick up something from the road and chuck it into the ditch.

Yeah. I do believe Turtle Man picked up a box turtle and tossed it. To where he thought it was out of harm's way, I'm sure. So no cars would run over it on the road while it was crossing. HOWEVER...I would not be surprised if his good deed hastened the demise of that turtle. Mother Nature is a harsh taskmistress. What if that toss had landed the turtle on its back in the ditch. Or if, in trying to climb up out of the ditch, it tipped over onto its back. Where it would die a slow, lingering death, rather than be crunched under the tire of a 45 mph automobile. OR, what if that turtle had actually made it across the road to live out its life on the other side. And not had to climb out of a ditch and make that trek again?

I don't know. Sometimes, it seems, the more we try to save things, the more difficult we make their escape.