A Prehistoric Encounter

Several weeks ago I had an enlightening encounter. I walked out of my home on Great Island in Narragansett, Rhode Island and came face to face with an enormous snapping turtle. It was prodigiously wending its way back to Teal Pond on the south side of my home from the marsh on the north side of my home. Briefly our eyes met, two alien worlds totally, irrevocably unbridgeable. As we sized each other up momentarily, the turtle abruptly retracted its head, legs and tail. Out of compassion I respectfully retreated back into the house. Watching from my covert vantage point with utter fascination, it cautiously poked its head, legs and tail back out of its protective shell and slowly determindedly continued to move forward. The turtle's head was resolutely set with a conviction created by thousands of years of genetic stamping.

Every spring the female snapping turtles dig themselves out of the mud in Teal Pond and make their arduous journeys across my neighbors’ and my front yards to reach the marsh where they lay their eggs. Once these obligatory reproductive tasks have been completed the turtles return along the same path.



While pondering the thought that the turtle was intruding on my territorial turf, it suddenly occurred to me that, in fact, the intruder was I. There was a new healthy respectful thought process being hatched within me. These noble reptiles had been replicating this process many thousands of years before human beings ever existed on this island. I wondered if the turtle had considered me a temporary annoyance, a giant unknown threat, or both.

It continued on with a single minded determination returning to the pond. As the turtle reached the fringes of my lawn, it considered its options, there was only one, the path that had once been open to the pond but was now blocked by an enormous pile of lawn cuttings, compliments of my landscaper. The turtle looked to the right and to the left then proceeded on the course which it had always taken. As a voyeur, I watched with a sense of awakening respect, it took the most difficult way, the one programmed into it. There were several futile attempts, but some how this marvelous awkward creature made its way to the top with tremendous dignity. I watched until the last second as the turtle breached the top and then, I’m certain with a sense of relief on some primeval level, it disappeared out of sight into the underbrush. The turtle was home in the security of its pond. Yet again, the turtle had exposed itself to a dangerous and potentially fatal situation in the name of procreation in a world that had overtaken it, but not defeated it.

I stood there dumbfounded and realized that I had been taught a valuable life story. All creatures, great and small, should be accorded the same common dignity and a huge healthy respect.


Submitted by a humbled human being who was taught a graphic lesson by a simple snapping turtle.