Sheep Incognito Blog

Have you ever had a moment that just made you go "hmmmm - that was plainly weird..."?

Today my parents stopped by the house on their way to a local Alpaca farm (Lucky Acres Alpacas - here is their website: http://www.luckyacresfarm.com ) to buy some Alpaca yarn for Peter's mom (she's an avid knitting nut), some honey for my dad (he's an avid honey nut) and to introduce my dad to the alpacas there.

 The owners Gloria and Joe are sweet, sweet people, and some of the most caring people we've met. Their Alpacas all have names and matching attitudes - right now, there are about 3-4 babies there, and just loads and loads of character faces and funny hairdos.

After our visit we headed home, and Dad decided to take a different road home, just to see what's around the corner (it's always been one of our family's favorite pastimes: getting lost in America - it's where the real people and real beauty is found...old country roads, rocking chair porches, and miles and miles of meadows and forest lanes).

As we were driving down the little street, my 8-year-old yelled out "hey, there's a turtle back there!". Since my parents have only been here in the States for 2 years now, that sounded like an adventure right there, so Dad backed the car up, we grabbed the camera and headed across the ditch on the other side of the road - where we found a rather large shell turtle, stuck in one of the square openings of the mesh wire fence separating the forest from the roadway. He seems to have been hanging there for a while already - his little feet had dug away all the dirt underneath him, so he was balanced right on the middle of his shell, head and hindquarters hanging in midair. No telling how long he'd been there, but if you've ever read Terry Pratchett's "Small Gods" from the Discworld series, right about now your spine would be tingling...something about a God turned turtle in dire need of divine intervention kind of story.

We carefully removed him from the fence (he was wedged in there quite tight - there was no way he would have made it out of there on his own) and put him in the car.

For now, he is out in our backyard in a small fenced off area with some lettuce, some water and a pile of mulch to dig into if he wants to...in the morning, he will  be going back to freedom: I will take him down to the neighbor's property, where he will find forest, pond, meadow, or highway to hang out at. Should be a turtle's dream...unless you happen to know a better plan for him.

He's not a box turtle, more likely a snapping turtle or something along those lines. He does not have webbed feet, but does have some substantial claws and a bit of an upturned nose (water turtle??? Any clues for me?)

So here is the moral of that excursion:

If the road ahead looks boring, it still might be worth travelling anyway - if not for your sake, then perhaps for that of the poor turtle who crossed the road to get stuck in a fence...

Let's just hope the poor little fellow didnt make it through all of that to pass out in my back yard...