Ellen’s Blog

So….last night our young German Wire-Haired Pointer met up with his first turtle.  He was both excited and perplexed. He seemed to be debating his options: Would this be something good to eat?  Fun to play with? Dangerous in the extreme?  The possibilities had him delirious with joy.

The turtle had other worries.  It was a hot day and she had just trekked a fair distance from the slew she called home.  Her journey had brought her through a huge field, knee-high with weeds, to our newly shorn and vibrantly green lawn.  A generous divet, a/k/a “the nest”  had been prepared and, as Jaeger and I watched (both in wonder), she twitched her tail to one side, positioned herself off-set of the nest, and dropped her first egg.  Dog and I both registered our amazement.  She then used her back feet to shove the egg as deeply in the hole as possible.  A minute later…a second egg and more careful arrangement her nest.  These were fairly good-sized eggs.  Six more followed.  Finally, her hind feet clawing the soft clay with a backward motion, she buried her future progeny. 

Turtles (I read on-line), take 60-120 days to hatch, depending on the temperatures.  Sixty to 120 days needed to survive the skunk that frequents our yard, the aforementioned GWP, his co-hort, the mellow Yellow Labrador, and the lawnmower.  It seemed to me that the chances were not in the future turtles’ favor. 

Just a few short hours later and “Mom” turtle is gone.  The slew has called.  At first, I feel sorry for her.  Talk about a thankless mothering experience!  And then, it occurs to me.  How lucky she is!  For her, there is no awareness of marauding skunks, over-curious canines or rotating blades of mechanical doom.  She lives a worry-free, finite motherhood, while I struggle on year after year, concerned even yet about my now-adult offspring and their journeys through a world replete with skunks, and dogs (the dirty dog kind) and, well, you get the idea….

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Non-Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.