Turtle Ta(i)l(e)

This is Charlie.

The other day, I found a turtle. I was leaving one of my dance classes, hum de dum, as I always do, when I saw something on the ground. It was so pretty, I thought it must be some kind of jewelry, when I realized that what it looked like was a turtle shell. This realization was shortly followed by the realization that the reason it looked like a turtle shell was that it was a turtle shell. I picked it up and looked at it, and lo and behold, there was someone inside looking back at me. I was dumbfounded. Who finds a turtle on the sidewalk, the day after a spring snowstorm? This is a turtle, a TURTLE for crying out loud! How did it get here? I looked around dumbly, like someone was going to come running up shouting, "Has anyone seen a turtle, I dropped a turtle!" Or like I would see someone walking away with a turtle cage, the door swinging conspicuously open. No such luck. A few folks meandered by, all minding their own business and not so much looking for any lost turtles. I did the only thing I could think of to do. I took him home in a styrofoam cup that I happened to have in my car, and then he spent a few days living in a very large vase.

He is very small, maybe not even half the size of my palm. I read that it is illegal to sell turtle eggs or baby turtles, and I have a hard time imagining a wild turtle hatching out and climbing from the nearest pond, probably a mile away, onto a college campus. The only thing I could think of is that maybe someone decided that they didn't want him, and left him there. But I found him, and I want to keep him. A few days after he came to live with me, my friends Nikki and Mark gifted me with an aquarium, a filter, and a floating rock that he can climb up on and bask. I bought a heater for the water in his aquarium right away, because I think the house is uncomfortably cold for a turtle during the day. I also bought two little live plants, but now I am struggling to get them to stay where I plant them in the gravel of the tank. Keeping turtles is expensive, even when the turtle is free.

His name is Charlie and I already love him very much.