The Turtle or the Kitten

The first living being I saw when I went out for my walk yesterday afternoon -- after being greeted by the kitten, of course -- was a three-toed box turtle on the grassy area in the middle of my internal road.

The turtle kept its head out, but it seemed a little traumatized, and it had white damaged areas on the top of its shell. The kitten pretended at first not to be interested at all, but it did walk by a couple of times.

"I am just minding my own business," the kitten seemed to be saying. "Do not pay any attention to me."

The turtle is alert and wary

The turtle looked alert, wary and concerned. The kitten affected ennui and rolled up in a ball on the road behind me.

The Kitten Pretending not to be Interested

However, every time I backed away from the turtle, the kitten went to examine it.

The Kitten Moves In

And when the turtle finally worked up the courage to walk away, the kitten followed it.

So I picked up the kitten by the scruff of its neck, as a mother cat would, and I let the turtle continue with its progress. But the turtle only tried to hide in the longer grass under the oak trees in the tear drop turn, and I realized it would not really go where it wanted to go until I was out of sight. And yet I could not go back in the house and leave the kitten out there, because there was no reason to suppose it would leave the turtle alone.

The Kitten in Storage

So again, as I had done once before, I deposited the kitten in the little storage shed, and after that I realized I could go for a long walk in the pasture without being followed by the kitten, while the turtle could do it its own thing.

I checked on the turtle on more time. It was still in the same spot, and then on my way to the pasture, I saw a Common Buckeye.

Even though I had seen a common buckeye up close before, this was the first time I was struck with how the markings on the back of its wings make a face, if you just look at it the right way.

Can you see the image of the face on the wings of the Buckeye?

You have to be facing it from just the right angle before it looks like a face. The big circles are like eyes, the medium-sized circles in the center are like nostrils, and the smaller circles on the sides are like ear holes. I don't know what animal the buckeye is pretending to be, but I have read that the circles are meant to confuse predators. So though butterflies predate vertebrates on the evolutionary scale, they must have evolved later to mimic their faces, so as to frighten other vertebrates away. And the intelligence that drives the design on the back of the butterfly is not that of the butterfly itself -- it's ours! Not necessarily humans, but any animal capable of making out that face drawing on the back of the wings, is the true author of the design. Now there is a twist on the theory of intelligent design: that later developed animals shape designs on the back of less evolved animals. It's our ability to recognize the gestalt that made it useful to the butterfly!

The butterfly does not need to think the design looks like a face. But if predators do and are scared, the design will be replicated. And then multiple copies will be available, just as in the case of a best selling book.

As a writer, this idea is very discouraging to me, since it means that it's not the story I wrote that is important, but only what readers are able to understand from the story I wrote. It is not my intelligence that limits the effect of my efforts: it is the intelligence of readers.

Later in my walk I came across a much plainer butterfly. It seemed to be trying to look like a dead leaf.  I think it might be called a Clover Looper. Looking like a leaf is a good strategy right now, as fall is almost upon us.

It's thistle season again, and though many of the flowers are still closed, a few have already opened for business and are attended by very busy bees.

My property is like a park, a nature preserve of sorts.

I go for a walk here the way some city dwellers go to the park. And I get to decide what exotics will share this paradise with me, even if they are not native to the area and do pose a threat to the wildlife.

Letting the Kitten out of Storage

After I got back from my walk, I let the kitten back out of storage. The turtle was long gone by then. Some people say cats belong indoors all day. Some people say humans should not own animals. No matter what you do, there is going to be somebody to criticize it. But I did not ask for this cat. I found a kitten in a stroller in my barn, and I did not want it to die, so I fed it. This does not mean I am a cat lover, but I am not a cat hater, either. I am trying to find some kind of balance between what is right for the kitten and what is best for me and all the rest of the animals on my property.

Bow happily engages Leo

When I returned to the pens, Bow asked to go outside, and immediately went to engage Leo in play. He looked happy.

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.

A Turtle as Well

Yesterday was the day of the toad. But that same day, after lunch, when I went for my walk, I saw a turtle as well.

He was out in the open, his head held high, in the southern five acres  not too far from the woods on the east and the overgrown pasture in the West.

Unlike the most recent turtle I saw, who would rather drown than let me see it moving, this turtle did not mind letting me observe it walking. It had no trouble coming out of its shell.

My friend Pam, who is a turtle expert, told me it was a male three-toed box turtle, considerably older than the one I saved from the dogs on the day when it rained. Pam thinks there is a large turtle population living on my land. She said I should consider putting out fresh corn and bread so that the wild turtles would come visit me.

The problem is I don't have any fresh corn and bread. I am trying to cut down on carbs. Why couldn't the turtles fill up on milk and bacon? Pam says reptiles can't drink milk, just because they are not mammals. But tell that to the snake charmers. I don't think milk was invented just for mammals. I think it must be a substance that pre-mammalians liked, or else we could not have gotten here from there.

Anyway, for the time being, the turtles on my land will just have to fend for themselves, and I will make do with chance encounters. It's actually more fun when seeing a turtle is a surprise.

Bow enjoyed his own outdoor time yesterday, mostly being lazy in the outer pen.

Last night, it rained, and now the outer pen is wet, and Bow does not want to go outside. I thought I would entertain him by showing him the video of the turtle on YouTube. But we got a 500 internal service error screen.

Bow thought it was his fault, so he kept randomly pressing keys, trying to correct the problem.

I had a very hard time explaining to him that there was nothing he could do to fix it.

Don't you hate it when it's not your chimp's fault, but YouTube is blaming all its technical problems on non-human primates? I told Bow it was actually the people at Google who were to blame. Eventually, he believed me.

A Guest Turtle on a Stormy Day

Yesterday was a day of strange weather and odd portents, and briefly we entertained a guest turtle.

It started off cloudy and windy and cool, with Bow enjoying the great outdoors. Then at one point I noticed that out in the yard, among Brownie's extensive collection of treasured rocks, there was what looked like a turtle shell. So I told Bow I needed to investigate and went into the back yard.

The dogs did not seem too concerned about the turtle shell, which was clamped shut and seemed lifeless, although I could see that someone was still in there by looking through the cracks. I showed Bow the turtle shell, then went to put it out on the front porch, where it would be safe from the dogs.

The turtle still showed no sign of moving, so I left it there and came back later to check. When I returned, it was nowhere to be seen, neither in the spot where I had put it, nor in the immediate vicinity moving away from the house. I spotted a rabbit in the pasture, but no turtle. How fast can a turtle run? I wondered.  Thinking that the turtle was gone for good, I stopped to admire some wild flowers in my front yard.

It was only after I turned around to go back in the house that I spotted the turtle. It was very close to my front door.

The shell was open, and I could see its head looking out through the crack. It was shy but curious.

I went back in and took care of some things for Bow. By now Bow was in the inner pen. Then I brought out some vegetables for the turtle.I left the vegetables by the doorstep and went back inside.

 My friend Pam, who is an expert on both turtles and Jean Laffite,  identified it as a three-toed box turtle.  She suggested I give it fresh corn and berries. I didn't have that, so I opted for cauliflower and cherry tomatoes. But the turtle did not go toward the vegetables. When I returned a little later, he  had already  moved again to put more distance between himself and the food.

I never saw the turtle move. But I did see him in a different location every time I came back. Once he was on top of a sack of  potting mix.

The next time he was in my rock garden next to the porch.

By then, the weather was getting pretty stormy, and it was right after lunch. I cleared away the dishes and told Bow I was going out. Normally, I take my walk right after lunch. But this time I thought I would sit very still with my camera on the front porch and see if I could get some footage of the turtle walking away.

It started to rain, and the turtle was in an uncomfortable place, where all the run-off from the roof goes. Surely he will move now! I thought. But no. He stayed put and for five minutes I watched him do nothing while he was practically buried in water. Finally, I could stand it no more. I fished him out with a sigh and put him on the dry porch cement. Then I went back in to the pen.

When I checked again, the turtle had gone and no search could reveal his whereabouts. I hope he made it safely to the destination of his choice.

When I was little I wanted to adopt every animal I met. But now I am happy to host lots of independent animals on my land, most of whom I will never meet, who are all perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.

Bow was unusually calm during this particular storm. He was happy to have me back in the pen, and he even groomed me calmly during a thunderstorm. We were lucky with the weather we got, because people in adjoining areas had it much worse.

Empathy, Literacy and the Full Moon

Last night was the night of the Strawberry  Moon. No, I did not get a good picture of it with my cell phone camera. So I will leave that to your imagination -- or you could check the blog of somebody who has a real camera.

But I did have some interesting experiences, possibly due to the full moon, and also a few thoughts to share.

Yesterday I ran across an article in the Atlantic about how literacy improves empathy. It was full of platitudes: reading about another person's experiences in a literary work (as opposed to say, low brow lit) improves our ability to empathize with others, according to the article. Then they gave some reasons why they think that, among them: literacy is something that has to be taught. Because it's unnatural, it makes us think more. And thinking leads to empathy, and so we are getting better and better, and are more empathetic than pre-literate people.

If you have connections, you can write anything in a prestigious journal and get it published. But really! That argument is full of holes. First of all, literacy does not have to be taught, any more than language has to be taught. It can be picked up, but it requires exposure. Like language itself, literacy is something few people would come up with on their own, because most do not invent their own language or their own alphabet. But with exposure in a social setting, we pick up the ambient language. And many children, including Bow, have also picked up the ability to read, without explicit instruction. Literacy happens when people who are pre-wired to decode are exposed to writing and language in a social setting.

Secondly, high literature predates writing. Many great classical works of literature, including parts of the Old Testament and the Iliad, existed as oral tradition before they were ever set down in writing. Writing does not beget literature. It merely helps to preserve it. And empathy, if we have any, is something we bring to literature: not something we gain from reading it. People without empathy can't get it out of a book.

Take Bow, for instance. He has empathy, because he can feel what another person feels without getting under their skin. He brings this empathy to bear every time he grooms me.

Bow has surgical instruments at his fingertips, and yet his touch when he examines me is soft and gentle. He can remove a mole with a single flick of a finger, and yet he examines each blemish on the surface of my skin with care. Like a doctor, he examines ears, eyes and nose to determine any signs of ill health or disease. But unlike most of today's doctors, he does it without asking for a fee.

Can empathy be taught? I don't think so. No more than literacy can be. It can be demonstrated,  but we cannot expect to teach it to an unwilling and unmindful pupil. My experience is the same with readers of my books. You can take them on the journey, but they will not suffer along with the characters, if their mind is closed.  To feel for another, you have to have feelings for yourself. Today, many humans have shut themselves down. They are blind  to the sights that surround them, and they feel nothing that they have not somehow been given permission to feel by the society they live in.

Walking alone yesterday evening, I stayed open to the world around me. A snake was lying across my path, so I stepped aside and walked around it. But then curiosity got the better of me, and I turned back and tried to film it. The snake, wanting to avoid a confrontation, seeing that I was not leaving, decided to go back into the overgrown pasture.

It was an eastern yellow-bellied racer, a friend later told me on Facebook. Racer is a good name for it, as once it made up its mind to leave, it wasted no time in executing that decision.

I peered into the pasture, where I spotted a beautiful flower, which a Facebook friend later identified as common milkweed.

I continued along my path all the way to the western edge of my property, then headed back. On the way back, I came across a turtle. The turtle, being slow, allowed me to take more time to observe it.

There was exposed dirt where the turtle's hind quarters were moving, and at first I thought it was trying to dig its way out of the shallow hole it was in.

But when I shared the footage I got of the turtle with a Facebook friend, she told me it was female three-toed box turtle who was digging a nest to lay her eggs in.

I left her alone, thinking that whatever she was up to, she did not need my help to do it.

 My friend says that seeing a female box turtle dig a nest in the wild is quite rare, because they usually do this in private where no one can see. But it was the evening of the strawberry moon, and the animals were coming out. I was glad I was there to see it.

Does empathy come from a book? I don't think so. Empathy means being able to feel for others, even those quite different from us. Empathy prepares people to understand what they read. It makes us better readers and better people.  But empathy is not found between the pages of a book. It is found within us -- or not at all.