The Tortoise and the Hare

This is the time of year when all the wildlife seems to come out from wherever they were hiding. The day before yesterday, Bow told me there was something going on in the front yard and encouraged me to go outside and look.

From the yard I could see a deer in the pasture. Then it was joined by another, before they both bounded off.

It has been raining a lot. I missed several walks in the past few days after lunch, because it started to rain just when I wanted to go for a walk. Everything is soaked, even the peony.

Yesterday, to make up for the missed walk after lunch, I went out in the late afternoon when the sun was high in the sky, just before dinner time. It was hot and muggy. The air was full of moisture. On the way to the barn, I saw a turtle moving in the distance, so I went to investigate.

Though the turtle had been moving along at a good pace, for a turtle, it stopped dead in its tracks when it saw me approach.

Evasive maneuvers for a turtle seem to be to stay very still. I was lucky that it did not withdraw completely into its shell.

There were tiny little flies and other insects buzzing right in front of the turtle's head, and I wondered whether it wanted to eat them.

My turtle expert friend, Pam Keyes, identified this as a female three-toed box turtle who is rather old -- at least fifty years old, she said, if not older.

The turtle has had some sort of traumatic encounter with a predator in the past, as there are bite marks on her shell.

I wanted to get to know her better, but really what can you say to a turtle to elicit its life story?

I also wanted her to start walking again, so I could get some footage of that, but it was clear that as long as I kept staring at her, the turtle was not going anywhere. So I decided to walk away for a while to give the turtle a chance to get going. My plan was to come back and film her from behind as she walked away, because that seems to be less disruptive for turtles.

As I walked away, in the direction of the lagoon and the peony, a rabbit caught my eye.

The evasive maneuver of the rabbit is to sit still until you approach a little closer, then to lead you on a merry chase.

The rabbit loves to run in zigzags to try to confuse its pursuer. After it had led me all around a pine tree and zig-zagged across the lawn, it went straight to the fence-line. I decided not to pursue any further, and just go back to check on the turtle's progress. But when I returned to the spot, the turtle was long gone. That fifty year old female box turtle  had taken a lot less time than the rabbit to move on. This reminded me of the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare.

Getting to Know Turtles

There might be hundreds of turtles living on my land. But I only encounter a turtle once in a good long while. When I do, I stop to take a picture, but the truth is I'm not very good at recognizing turtles. They all look the same to me, more or less. And I don't know if the differences that I do notice are personal, individual differences, or based on species and sex. So when I met the female three-toed box turtle yesterday on my walk, I did not know if I had ever seen her before.

In fact, I did not even know she was a female till my friend Pam told me. I spotted her on my walk out to the pasture.

I stopped to look, snapped some pictures and proceeded on my walk. But I saw her again on my way back to the house.

She looked so familiar. Had I ever seen her before?

I had seen a female turtle digging a nest last year in June, on the night of the strawberry moon. Could this be the same one? The odds seemed slim, but I dug up that old video to look at.

I showed the video to Pam, who is my turtle expert, and she confirmed it was the same turtle! So now this female three-toed box turtle and I have a history. Maybe we'll recognize each other next time we meet!

Getting to know someone is a long and complicated process. Sometimes, when we meet someone from a different species, culture or race, we mistake general traits for individual traits, and we may not realize what it is that makes this individual truly special. It makes me think of the song "Getting to Know You" from the King and I,  which I like to imagine is about this issue.

Getting to know someone can be a lifetime process, as hypothesis after hypothesis about what makes them uniquely who they are is thrown out when new evidence emerges that falsifies the previous hypothesis. Many people, however, do  not even bother to look for evidence to falsify their initial hypothesis, and then they live with a stereotype of the person they know, instead of the person himself. These are the people who are doomed to be eternal strangers, no matter how long we have known them.

Bow and I are still in the process of getting to know each other. I don't always understand what makes him tick. I can't always anticipate with certainty what he is going to do or say.

There is nothing like a grooming session to bring two individuals closer together. I feel I know him very well.

 But there are times when Bow is being very thoughtful, when I still don't know what is going through his mind.