Saturday afternoon turtle rescue

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LEAVE THE CITY: Ryan and I were driving down 301 right past the best Post Office ever (it’s in Spencer and about 100 square feet), and I nearly ran over a turtle in the middle of the road. I made it about 100 yards farther down the highway (looking in my rearview mirror worrying about whether the next five cars would hit it) when I turned my car around and made Ryan rescue it. It, apparently, made it halfway and panicked because it didn’t want to come out of its shell. I wanted to say, dude, you have to commit to something like crossing the street.

When Kyle and I were younger we had a turtle, which we also found in the middle of the road in a space called Widget Run in southern Ohio. We named it Widget (which was not as creative as Georgette and Dudette, our hamsters). It was kind of a feral turtle, so it had to live in the hemmed in “dirt pile” area of the backyard. Until, of course, it ran away. The kid down the street found it and claimed it was his, and we didn’t fight it mostly because his mom was blind. I was recently happy to commiserate about this with Moffat who is perhaps the only other person in Ohio whose turtle ran away from home.