Turtles Everywhere

On  Wednesday, I ran errands, as it was my day off. Very close to the same place I had met the Eastern Box Turtle about a week earlier, another, less exotic turtle was stranded in the middle of the road. I don't know how they get into these situations, except that they must set out confidently to cross the road, and then a car comes by, and they get scared, and go back into their shell, and then they have no idea when to try again.

I saw the turtle as I was passing by the local school, but I could not stop the car there, so I waited till I got to the next parking lot, which belonged to a church. Then I backtracked on foot quite a distance to where the turtle was still waiting.

I picked it up from behind and brought it over to the side of the street it had been facing.

The sun was very bright and high in the sky and cast gigantic shadows.

Once it was safely on the other side, I stopped to snap a picture, and then I walked back to my car. The turtle did not open up while I was there.

Then that evening I saw a turtle out on the lawn on my own property.

It seemed very familiar. I was sure I had seen it before.

There were markings on the shell that were unmistakable.

At first it would not open up, but after I gave it some distance, it proceeded along its chosen trajectory.

I snapped a few more pictures, then watched it disappear into the pasture.

All of the nature photos I have been taking really came in handy yesterday, for the music video of "I Love Everyone" from The Debt Collector, a musical that composer Daniel Carter and I collaborated on about five years ago. The singer is Erin Royall Carlson.

This song does not represent my philosophy, by the way. It is the world view of Siren the Social Worker, a statist and a fuzzy thinker who believes that everything in nature revolves around her and that she can solve everybody's problems. This is from early on in the musical, and it is Siren's introductory song.  I do not believe we can love everyone equally, nor does it make sense to try. But the nature photos do seem to go well with the song.

Erin Royall Carlson also did a great job on "Steak on a Plate", a campy, sexy song from the third act. When Bow heard her singing, he asked to see the singer, but he was disappointed when there were no images of Erin Royall Carlson belting out the song.

I saw a meme today that represents everything that is wrong with the way people look at love, welfare and helping others. It was a dog with his dish held in his mouth, looking mournfully into the camera. "Would you give up your meal so that your dog can eat?" was the caption.

No. Dogs were not meant to eat a special diet that costs their owners money. Man and dog have always shared their meals -- neither had to give up a meal for the other. Dogs are supposed to eat our leftovers. That's how this symbiotic relationship between Man and Wolf began. It requires no self sacrifice and is beneficial to both.

You might as well ask: Would you give up a meal so that the beneficial bacteria in your gut can have something to eat? No, the bacteria share our food naturally. Society is so confused right now that people have no idea how to coexist peacefully with others in a natural way that benefits all. You're not even allowed to give your leftovers to the poor, because it's not "sanitary"!

Good Deed

In the past few weeks, I have slowed down for squirrels crossing the road, rabbits that could not seem to decide which way they were going, a turkey who just had to get to the other side of the road at the moment when  I was driving through, and a couple of deer. I avoided hitting them, though sometimes it was close. Usually I cannot slow down enough to allow a turtle to get all the way to the other side, and if it is a busy road, I cannot afford to stop and help it across. The most I can do is try to drive around it. But today I saw a turtle in the road that I could help, because it was in a quiet village street and not on the highway.

I parked the car on the side of the road by somebody's house, and I went to get a closer look at the turtle.

It had beautiful markings, much more vivid than those on the turtles that I come across on my own property.

I picked it up and placed it on the grass on the side that was in the direction it was headed,

I could not linger long, though, as another car was coming.

I showed the pictures to my friend Pam Keyes, and she said this was an Eastern Box Turtle, which would not normally be found in the wild  this side of the Mississippi. Is this a lost pet? Or has there been a new migration, I wonder? Either way, I hope the turtle found its way to the intended destination.

Was it a good deed to help the turtle across the road? Some people think it is not a good deed unless the doer sacrificed something. I disagree. Here are the values I was raised on:

1. Help when it easy for you to do and would be of great value to the person helped.
2. Don't sacrifice a higher value to a lower.
3. Don't help habitually, but only every once in a while, when the good you do far outweighs the cost.

I learned these frugal values from my father. I would never sacrifice another human being in order to spare the life of a turtle. I would not swerve and hit another car to save that turtle. I would not feel obliged to help the same turtle cross the same road if I saw it in the same predicament yet again. And I always weigh the cost to me versus the benefit to the turtle. I do the same thing when helping other human beings.

These values are quite different from those in the culture that surrounds me. Some people think it is not a good deed unless you sacrifice a greater value to a lesser. In a young adult novel that I borrowed from my daughter, a man swerves to avoid hitting a deer and gets almost his entire family killed. (This results in his surviving daughter developing paranormal powers, which naturally catapults her into a teen occult romance. ) The action of the father in swerving is supposed to show what a good man he was. In my book, that's not a good man. That is deeply, deeply flawed.

In a movie I started to watch one night, a bleeding heart, pregnant animal rights activist trespassed onto a neighbor's property to feed a chained pitbull that she believed was being mistreated by its owner. The pitbull mauled her, caused her to miscarry and lose the ability to have children, and because of her actions, trespassing and  inciting the pitbull to attack her, the pitbull himself was put to death by the authorities. The woman was portrayed in the movie as if she were heroic. But whom did she help? Not herself, not her unborn child, not her husband -- and certainly not the dog that she got killed!

First do no harm. That should be everybody's motto. Good intentions are useless when they cause nothing but harm.  But the entire "Rescue" movement has made that woman a heroine to be emulated. 

Even when it comes to fighting for your country, people downgrade Jean Laffite because he made a profit from privateering. 

Theodosia and the Pirates

Historians  forget that it is the fact that he saved the nation that makes Laffite's contribution valuable. That it cost him less than it cost the inept Navy under Commodore Patterson is just another of Jean Laffite's many virtues. Think how much money he saved the taxpayers! You get credit for helping others to the extent that you do it at your own expense and initiative and that it does not cost anyone else anything. You get zero credit for sacrificing yourself, and you earn demerits for sacrificing others.

Goodwill to all makes us stop to help another living being, when all other things are equal. I hope that Eastern Box Turtle made it safely to its destination, whatever that may be,  and that the world is a better place for my action. But if I see that same turtle in the middle of the road again, and I cannot stop without harming someone else, I will  not save it again. Helping others is good, but it is more important to do no harm.