Thoughts Happen

My turtle's not dead! (What else can I worry about?)

Littlefoot, the reclusive box turtle that lives in an enclosure outside my kitchen window, was sighted this weekend—he's not dead! In the days since I last posted about "My cold-blooded teacher", I still hadn't got the nerve to go rooting around looking for him, but Saturday morning my daughter spotted two little red peppercorn eyes peeping out from underneath the palm frond in his enclosure (which is not technically a frond but the bottom part of the palm that gets cut off in the tree trimming but I never know what to call it, so "frond" it is). At the time she was arranging her collection of cat figurines in a tableaux at the east end of the enclosure—if he ever ventures over that way (it is, oh, a good seven feet away), he'll encounter some new playmates who are only slightly less animated than he is. 

That's pretty much all we saw of him, but for me, it was enough. As soon as I peeped over at the little guy I got so happy. Nothing could bother me the rest of the day. Littlefoot was alive and well and all was right with the world. And physically I felt better than I had in weeks. I spent the rest of the day de-cluttering some of the worst parts of the house and giving the wood floor the Murphy's oil treatment it so desperately needed. And I enjoyed it. (You know you've been on the mend for too long when you actually look forward to feeling good enough to clean). And we finally put up the adorable Turtle Crossing sign we bought at the Pacific Islander Festival last September which had been loitering in the guest room all this time. We didn't get around to it before his hibernation and it just didn't seem right to put it up while he was, you know, asleep. 

My good mood—and stamina—lasted for about 10 hours. As I was getting ready for bed all of a sudden I thought, "Why didn't he come out to eat anything today?" I left two of his favorite foods—strawberries and canned cat food—in his food dish, but as of nightfall they were untouched. "I hope he's alright. Maybe it's too dry for him. I hope he's okay." Cripes. You'd think I could at least enjoy the fact that he's alive a little longer before getting sucked into worrying again.

The next day I felt tired and achy, which wasn't too surprising. I'm at the point where I"m not really expecting too many good days in a row. And I still fretted a bit about the turtle in the back of my mind (I know, "He's a turtle, Mom. He'll be fine.") It didn't occur to me until a few days later that maybe I had felt good on Saturday because I was happy, not necessarily the other way around. Which came first? Hmm ... have to think about that. 

In the meantime, you'll be glad to know that it appears he has eaten. He seems to subsist mainly on air as far as I can tell, so anytime I spot a half-nibbled strawberry in his dish I rejoice like an Italian mother whose new daughter-in-law has just polished off a plate of pasta. So it looks like we'll be enjoying his enigmatic presence for a while longer. I don't know how long, but I'll try to enjoy it while I can.

My cold-blooded teacher

I’m worried about our turtle. That would be Littlefoot, our box turtle who drove me to distraction when he made a break for it two years ago, which I blogged about in “What the Turtle Taught Me." Not long after that incident we created an outdoor turtle enclosure out of a converted raised bed-cum-sandbox, and he’s been pretty happy, I guess, living in the not-so-wide world outside. 

On the advice of a "turtle lady" acquaintance we met through the San Diego Turtle and Tortoise Society, we've been letting him hibernate over the winter. He's an efficient digger, and, sure enough, right around his first Halloween outside he burrowed under and stayed there for about five months. He reappeared towards the end of March last spring to spend another summer as he usually does, skulking under a palm frond most of the day and occasionally sunning himself. 

He hibernated again this winter, and I have been anxiously awaiting his reappearance. Although he's technically our daughter's pet, I've developed quite a soft spot for the little guy, and my maternal instincts have been kicking in big-time. Before we adopted him I'd always been a cat person, and even though he's a bit of an enigma, I've grown pretty attached to him. The whole turtle-coming-out-of-its-shell metaphor bears more than a passing resemblance to my life after 40, so I see him as a sort of mascot—I've even dreamed about him. And besides, when I see his little leathery head with the beady red eyes poking out from his shell or catch a glimpse of him slowly traversing the enclosure with a deliberate gait, it makes me happy.

I actually did see him once in early March during a late-winter Santa Ana weekend, but since then, nada. As March ticked on into April I kept telling myself that I was going to thoroughly search his enclosure, but I keep putting it off. The truth is that I'm afraid of what I'll find. What if he's dead? Box turtles are supposed to live a long time, and Littlefoot is only 10. If he's dead that might mean that we (meaning I) killed him, and I don't know how I would handle that. Although he seems to subsist pretty well without much interference from me, so it's probably presumptuous to assume that his demise would have much to do with me either—the ultimate conceit?

I was really going to look for him on Sunday, and then on Monday. I thought about it Tuesday morning, but then our daughter discovered her Betta fish dead in his tank. There were tears—from both of us. I was not as attached to the fish, named 'Uli-'uli, as to Littlefoot, but he did have a bit of fishy personality. He preferred the tiny dried worms in his fish food to the flakes, and he sucked them down with gusto before returning to make the rounds of his tank. We buried him in a hole in the ground last night. 

So now I'm really hesitant to go searching for Littlefoot. If he's dead I will be very sad, but what if he's alive? Our daughter's advice to me is, "He's a turtle, Mom. He'll be fine," but I can't stop fretting. I keep watering his enclosure but can't bring myself to get down on my hands and knees and root around. 

Sigh. Just another opportunity to get comfortable with uncertainty, I suppose. For a cold-blooded reptile not much bigger than my fist he certainly is an exasperating teacher.

What the Turtle Taught Me

I am on my hands and knees in the backyard, scrabbling around in the undergrowth, looking for a turtle. Not just any turtle — our turtle. Our turtle named Littlefoot that we’ve had for only a few months, inherited from the neighbors who got him as a Christmas present for their daughter eight years ago, a daughter now grown and out of the house. My own 9-year-old daughter loves animals, and so — we have a turtle.

I’ve been out here searching for him for about forty minutes, and I am going stark raving mad. I feel trapped. I can’t stop looking for the turtle, but I sooo don’t want to be here right now. How did I end up in this place, rooting around behind scratchy, overgrown lilac bushes looking for a reptile the size of my fist that’s perfectly designed to blend into the background? I’ve got bits of dried foliage in my hair, my back is getting tired, and my patience is wearing thin. I feel squeezed.

There’s something about a lost object that always sends me into a panic. In the past year or two I’ve started becoming aware of this pattern. My immediate thought is almost always “It’s gone forever. I will never see it again.” Being comfortable with ambiguity is an underdeveloped skill in my life. The Not Knowing is such an anathema that the certainty of loss is in some ways more comforting.

But the thought of losing something living is almost too horrible to comprehend.

My logical mind says, “He must be out here somewhere, I mean, how far could a turtle go? Just keep looking and you’ll find him.” But my not-so-logical mind is freaking out in a constant stream of tumbling thoughts: “Oh my God, how could we lose a turtle! I am never going to find him out here. What if we never find him — would he be okay?? After all he is a wild animal, but we’re responsible for him, dammit! I’ve never lost a pet before, and I’m certainly not going to start now. But where the hell is he??” (My not-so-logical mind is prone to swearing.)

My natural tendency would be to vocalize these not-so-logical thoughts to the closest person around, in a vain hope that I could lessen my anxiety by spreading it around. But the closest people to me are my daughter and her friend over for a playdate; they brought Littlefoot outside for some fresh air and exercise and within five minutes he had disappeared. Don’t believe that old fairy tale about turtles being slow — it’s a ruse.

So I pretty much have to be the grown-up here. I have enough presence of mind to realize that panicking in front of the girls, who are mildly panicked anyway, would serve no useful purpose. They are helping somewhat with the search, but frankly, they don’t want to be here either, and when you’re 9, you get an excuse. I tell them I will stay out and look for him. Eventually the other girl’s dad comes and takes them both out to ice cream, so at least if I want to freak out nobody will be watching.

I call my husband and freak out on the phone. He finds it somewhat amusing that a turtle ran away from us, and is not worried in the least that he won’t be found. I can always count on Jim to de-escalate my panic, although I sometimes find his unwillingness to corroborate my hysteria infuriating.

So here I am. I am still looking for the turtle. I did find a dead bird by the back fence and a c-shaped skeleton the size of my palm that I think is a lizard’s spine. It’s pretty neat, so I save it in an empty pot. And I realize, in the singleminded focus of the searching, what is going on in my mind. There’s an undercurrent of thought that I recognize oh so well, and it is saying “I Don’t Want to Be Here.” I realize that it’s not worry about the turtle that is really bothering me. It’s the Not Knowing. The Ambiguity. I try and shield myself from it daily, but in the moments when I am brought face to face with this inescapable fact of our existence, it gets Uncomfortable.

I keep looking, but no Littlefoot. Eventually after about two hours, I get a reprieve, as my daughter is back and must get ready for dance class. I take her to the studio and am relieved that I have an escape. At the end of her class Jim arrives and we do the transfer, he taking her home and I heading on to my own class.

Oh, and Littlefoot? Jim found him under a clump of grass about fifteen minutes after they got home, approximately five feet away from where he was last seen. The stinker.