A Sad Story about a Turtle

I was driving at the edge of town; technically it was a city address, but surrounded by farmers’ fields and hay bales. Turning a corner on a dirt road, I saw a big turtle walking away from a puddle.

I came back the same way half an hour later. The turtle had stumped along about a hundred yards in that time. Since I hadn’t stopped before, I pulled to the side of the dirt road and walked up to it and took its picture and told it that I wasn’t trying to hurt it; before I’d gotten within six feet it had pulled in its head and legs. I took my photos and walked away, and so did it.

As I was walking back to my car, a truck drove up in the oncoming lane. It pulled over as well, off where the turtle was. Then a big truck, the kind that carry fill-dirt from place to place, came down the road in my lane. From my parked car, I watched the big truck head down the road, between the stopped truck and the turtle on the very edge, and I watched the front wheels pass the turtle safely, and the middle wheels, and then I watched the last wheel clip the turtle.

I got back out of my car and headed toward the turtle. As I did this, the small truck pulled up to where I was, and stopped, and the man inside got out. I didn’t know if he’d seen, if he’d been doing something else, so I said that the turtle had been hit. We both got there and saw that the shell was badly broken. The turtle was walking further off the side of the road, but was clearly not going to survive.

The man said that he felt so guilty, because if he hadn’t been pulled over on the other side of the road, the big truck wouldn’t have hit the turtle. I said no, I’d watched the truck, it had had just enough room but the last wheel had swung out. We said that we wished it went quickly. The man said that he wanted to put it out of its misery. (I thought: please don’t get a gun from your truck. Please don’t shoot the turtle. Please don’t stand next to me with a gun on an empty country road.) We knew that there was nothing we could do. I said that other animals would come and this would keep them going for one meal more. He said that it pained him to watch the turtle suffering. We watched its head move. He said that it wasn’t right for an animal to die like this. I said that it was scary, how fast life goes, for a turtle or a person. (One day you’re walking down a road, and then a truck hits you, and you are gone, and no one can bring you back.) He said that there’s a vet somewhere in town who deals with cases like this, but that there was no point. I said that it’s too hot, that if either of us put the turtle in a car, that wouldn’t help. He said that if he picked it up, he didn’t know what further damage he’d do. We didn’t have anything else to say. We stood in the sun for almost ten minutes, watching the dying turtle.

Eventually, under the hot sun, we walked back to our cars, and he went his way and I went mine. And that was that.