Never Trust a Turtle

Thank you to Jamie for the beautiful title.

Let me regale you with an adventure from a few months ago. This is the tale of Sir Slow the Sly, a devious little painter turtle that ended up in our front yard yesterday, likely because of the recent rains at the time. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Imagine the scene: I’m prepping and cooking dinner in the kitchen, and my wife walks by and sees out the kitchen window a turtle crawling by. (She went “OMG OMG OMG TURTLE! and near scared me half to death.) Now, this might seem weird, but understand that our kitchen is magical for the fact that it is in our basement. This allows us to see out the basement window into our front yard where we’ve spied many a critter crawling by. This story isn’t about them, though, is it?

Today, we tell the story of Sir Slow the Sly.

When my wife notices the turtle, we put dinner on hold, gather our goat, put our shoes on, and we go outside to investigate. After some discussion, we decide to find a box and to collect the turtle that we might deposit him at the nearby bike/walking/nature trail, nearer a water source and well away from busy roads. So we pack him up and take him there.

Never trust a turtle.

Said turtle introduced himself as Sir Slow, and we took that at face value. Never quite understanding that he held the title of “the Sly.” We’d find that out soon enough, though.

Sir Slow was none too impressed with his new box, nor the baby carrots we tried to feed him. He was amenable to being picked up and carried about, or so we thought. With our shoes on for a calm walk, we locked the house up and headed to said safer locale.

This is when Sir Sly struck.

We were none the wiser to his wiles. But he must have waited some time to strike at us. I’ll never know why. We had a leisurely walk, dropped Sir Slow off near a creek and well away from busy roads. He stared at us with what might’ve been thankful, but rather, was malice.

After some gentle prodding, and a few more pictures, Sir Slow waddled into the brush, his little tail waving. Which, now I know, is the universal turtle sign for “Fuck you too, buddy.” Because, Sir Slow had laid us low without us being aware. We headed home, none the wiser.

When we arrive home, we find the machinations of Sir Slow, that sly bastard. Our door-lock batteries? As dead as we prevented Sir Slow from becoming. We were well and truly locked out of our house. Batteries low. Dinnertime on the horizon. No water. No keys.

Sir Slow won.

Or so we thought. With some quick thinking (after about 45 minutes of trying to find a lock smith, and trying to find a way in with spare keys we thought a friend had), I remembered we usually leave one window unlocked. Problem is, it’s on the first-and-a-half floor.

With quick thinking, I sent @lunae_dies over to a neighbors house, and lo and behold, our savior had a ladder. We managed to have a friend climb up the ladder and into the house and unlock our front door. Sir Slow the Sly may have won the battle, but the war shall rage on.

Fin.

Oh, here’s some pictures too, of Sir Slow the Sly.

If you’ve enjoyed this, and want to read more from me, you can find my works here.