I Can't Make this Stuff Up

So the phone on my desk rings today at 10:58 AM, and its Kris calling to tell me that we’re still cool to go eat burritos at 11:00, except that by “cool to go eat burritos,” what he meant (and said) was, “I have to go rescue a turtle before we can eat.” Hmm. It seems that yesterday Kris spotted a turtle in the road and, because he’s a softhearted guy, he stopped and put it in the passenger seat of his Volkswagen. Which is bizarre enough without mentioning that it was the second largest snapping turtle I’ve ever seen. (Ask me about the largest sometime.) He then drove the turtle (which at some point he named Rutherford) to his cousin’s house, where there was some sort of containment unit in the backyard. We now know what sort of containment unit it was—inadequate, because Kris’s cousin’s wife called him at work today, right before lunch, in a near panic because Rutherford had escaped and was working his way from backyard to backyard, presumably seeking someone to devour.

So off we went, Kris and I—he driving and I in the turtle’s seat. We got to the cousin’s house and were directed toward the appropriate backyard. Kris is among the least bashful people I know, so without hesitating he let himself in through the gate in the fence and began to call for this dragon-looking turtle—whistling and patting his thigh as if he were calling his dog. Before long he spotted the thing in the back corner of the yard (just past the small child’s swing-set). Stepping lightly Kris approached it and tried to pick it up. Of course it hissed and snapped and acted generally pissy until we (by which I mean Kris) were able to get it into a cardboard box and into the back of the VW hatchback. (I’d called shotgun for the return ride, though Kris seemed genuinely surprised that I wouldn’t ride with the damn thing on my lap.) Meanwhile Kris is telling me, “He thinks I’m his mom.”

Kris drives faster than I do, especially when he’s trying to salvage some lunchtime, so my nervous attentions were divided between watching the wet, curvy, hilly, rapidly approaching road in front of us, and looking backward over my shoulder just to make sure all the right boxes were still full of turtle. After several minutes of driving randomly around a couple residential subdivisions looking for “a creek or something,” Kris decided to take it back where he’d picked it up because, “there’s water there.” Good call. For obvious reasons, he didn’t want to leave it in the middle of the road where he found it, so he took it to a nearby bridge and let it fall fifteen feet into the water below. I almost think I spotted a tear in his eye as he shouted, “Swim away little fella.”

Made it to Chipotle in time to eat and were just minutes late back to work.

And to think that I nearly told him to just go on without me…