TURTLES

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the '80s

I let my daughter buy a turtle.  I can’t for the life of me remember why.  Maybe it was because I had already agreed that she could keep her biology teacher Mr. Eddy’s turtle for the summer.  Who knows?

At any rate, we went turtle shopping.  We bought a turtle, an aquarium and worms.  (Yummy!)  Then we needed clean sand.  Yard dirt wasn’t good enough.

At the garden store, the clerk asked what kind of sand I wanted.  In my experience, the subject of sand classifications had never arisen.  I told her I just wanted plain sand.  She asked what I was going to use it for.  So help me, she kept a straight face when I said, “It’s for a turtle.”

All the way home, we thought up turtle names.  The best one was Sherbert, since Mr. Eddy’s turtle, who would become Sherbert’s summer roommate, was named Herbert.

Poor Sherbert was very shy.  We held her until she finally got used to us and began cautiously poking her head out.  We discovered that scratching the bottom of her shell made her wiggle her legs. 

Next, my son’s friend heard that we were collecting turtles (really?) and generously offered a monstrosity that he found on his paper route.  We put Turtle Number Three in a child-size pool in my son’s bedroom for a few days.  For fun, we put Herbert and Sherbert in the pool for a while.  In his frantic search for an exit, Turtle Number Three (still unnamed) ran over shy little Sherbert like a bulldozer.

Herbert and Sherbert spent the summer in a large aquarium Mr. Eddy had lent us.  Herbert ate night crawlers like potato chips and Sherbert hid in her shell.  The pool went to the garage, and Turtle Number Three moved into the abandoned aquarium with the store-bought sand, still resolutely searching for a way out.  I was, too.