All Hail the Turtle...

 When I was a child I recall, and of course after all this time this reminisce might not be exactly factually correct, the family making the discovery of a large snapping turtle crawling through our backyard. 

There were still woods behind our home and the houses and streets back there were a few years away and there was a creek drainage snaking through this undeveloped area to emerge into a man made system of under street culverts and ditches to funnel the water away. This makes the turtle unsurprising as when you have woods you have mammals, reptiles and if there is enough water there will be fish.

I think and I'm not sure they thought like this back then but that now days parents make the attempt to turn anything a child experiences into a learning experience even to the extent of diminishing the traditional classroom.  I might be wrong but maybe my parents were ahead of the game but they did allow us to take a stick and poke the turtle. 

This of course made the turtle furious in the exact same way it would make you furious if you were poked with a stick and it exhibited the behavior for which it was named. It snapped at the stick. My parents told us that if it snapped a body part it would not release till it thundered. Surly a teaching moment and I probably told my kids the same thing and I'll tell the grandkids also but I now see signs at the boat launches on the nearby lake that due to rarity and approaching extinction I should report to Parks and Wildlife sightings of certain snappers including photos and GPS coordinates. 

The sighting of this statue in a Texarkana BBQ restaurant kind of boiled all this up in my mind. Why? They did not offer turtle on the menu which is quite common in certain parts of the country. 

My first impression was that little boy has two turtles but someone pointed out that it might not be a boy and I'm ok if you present how you want to. I felt the figure was showing a certain carefree joy so I looked up the symbolism of turtle and it's what you might expect. Longevity, slow and steady perseverance, healing, retreat, the Earth, receptivity, survival and determination are just a few things people associate with turtles which by the way are related to crocodiles and birds. Demonstrations of all these traits are necessary for a successful life and there are many ways to put them to good use. 

What do you think about the statue? 

That snapper we were poking with a stick that day was allowed to proceed on it's way. It's entirely possible that it's still crawling today as the life spans of these are thought to reach 100 years. I have not poked another turtle with a stick since then and have not had another snapping turtle encounter. I have caught a few fishing, all gently freed and observed many in the wild sitting on logs and once while canoeing in cold clear winter waters every time I looked down seemed like the turtles were swimming like aquatic acrobats under my boat. I've probably killed a few by running over them on the highway accidently when they crawl in the spring but I've tried to make up for it by stopping to recue others from the same fate. It's the way of the car. I've probably run over everything you can run over with a car but that's a diminishing occurrence as the wooded places near where people live, just like those of my childhood are now less and less.