Life Through the Eyes of a Turtle

Happy May, everyone.  It feels as though we reached a long-awaited milestone on the calendar.  
 
And speaking of milestones, I witnessed one yesterday which caught me totally by surprise.  And for once, it had nothing to do with writing goals, or my current historical romance manuscript, or even with getting our house sold. 

You see, last summer, I saw a mama turtle deposit a batch of eggs in a hole she dug in our lawn next to our front sidewalk.  When she was done, she trundled across our driveway and (I presume) through a small bit of woods to reach a pond on our neighbor’s property where we assumed she lived.
 
I looked up how long it should take for those eggs to hatch, and marked the date on a calendar.  When the time came, I kept watch and was very disappointed when no little turtles appeared.
 
Until yesterday. 
 
I was gone for a time yesterday morning and when I arrived home, I surprised a tiny little turtle, about the size of my thumb, in front of our garage.  You can see how small he is by comparing him to the dandelion in the photo.  When he saw me approaching, he scurried over to the mud puddle and plopped into it, no doubt hoping I couldn’t see him.  (I could – the puddle wasn’t that deep.  But I did admire his persistence in not moving as long as I was there.) 
 
When I told my husband about the little turtle later, he was the one who thought of the nest of turtle eggs from last year.  Sure enough, there was a small hole – tiny turtle sized – in our lawn in the nest’s location.  And according to my daughter-in-law, who works at a nature center, this sometimes occurs with turtles.  If the eggs hatch too late in the summer, the baby turtles simply stay put underground and hibernate through the winter, not coming out until the following spring. 
 
So I guess that is what happened with this little guy, and I am hoping will happen yet with his brothers and sisters.  Once the weather finally warmed up, he crawled out of his nest and then used his in-born homing instinct to crawl hundreds of yards back to that pond where his mother came from last summer.  Pretty amazing.
 
It dawned on me I could use him as an example for lessons on life, and for my writing.  I could create some wonderful metaphors about not giving up.  Or about waiting patiently for the right time for something to occur.  Or about homing instincts taking us where we need to be. 
 
But I decided not to.  Instead, I simply enjoyed this beautiful example of nature and God’s design for all life.  Happy May, everyone.

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