Turtles

January 6, 2019

Mom didn’t like animals in the house. No dogs, or cats, or even guinea pigs...a future memory on that one. So we could occasionally have a goldfish if we won it at the church fair or a turtle.
Years ago you could have a little green turtle, about the size of an Oreo. We had one or two at any given time. They lived in a plastic pan that you filled with water, and there was an island in the center that the turtle could go up on to dry. It even had a snap on palm tree so that the turtle felt tropical.
When you have toddlers in a house and accessible turtles, things can get ugly. I remember my brother, at the age of two or three being fascinated by our green buddies. On more than one occasion he had to be told to leave them alone.
The last turtle incident that I remember was when he decided they could fly and would launch them down the hallway. It wasn’t odd to look up at your bedroom door to see a turtle fly past.
Oddly, I don’t have many turtle memories after that...as if just disappeared.
Maybe mom was more of an animal lover than we thought.