Return of the Turtle People!
Life’s been a bit on top of me again, as you may surmise from the gap in my blogging. I’ve been trying hard to catch up on writing and having some difficulties with sleep patterns, in large part due to the loud construction work on the sidewalks that’ve been going on outside my bedroom window at way too early in the morning.
Anyway, today I got a lot written and the temperature and humidity weren’t bad, so I determined to get out. Loaded the famous Emma in the car and hit the ditch around 6:25.
Not much by way of birdage: some mallards, some hummingbirds, some swallows. Emma showed some interest in one pair of ducks swimming in the ditch we passed rather close by, but made no serious effort to retrieve them. To my relief.
We were walking back toward where tall trees line both sides of the ditch, a quarter-mile or so before the exit, when I noticed a man and a little boy coming up behind us on bicycles. For everybody’s convenience Emma and I crossed over to the other bank. It was not until until the man sang out a cheery, “And how are you this evening?” that I I recognized them.
Yes, they were the World’s Nicest Family. My loyal blog readers might recall them from an earlier post (it had Emma in it, so people may have actually read it): the folks with the Tortoise Dilemma.
“A beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Dad sang out as he and Bro pedaled past. “Simply beautiful.”
“Yes it is,” I called back.
Next came Mom, with Sis churning enthusiastically away on one of those bolted-on half-bicycle tandem arrangements. “Our turtle’s gone!” warbled the little girl, who apparently has the enviable gift of making whatever comes along sound like the best news possible, as happily as pie.
“What happened to it?” I called back. Mom gave me a passing smile. As if, I wondered suspiciously, perhaps she had, in some excess of misplaced Samaritanism, snuck the beast out the back gate while the rest of the family unit were otherwise occupied and plopped the poor non-amphibious little bastard back in the ditch. It’s not a wide ditch, so he could probably have made it to shore and scrambled to blessedly dry land. I mean, tortoises must float pretty well and all. I hope.
“I don’t know!” the little girl called. “Thanks for helping us with him! Bye-bye!”
“’Bye,” I called back. They sailed on. When they were, I hope, out of earshot I said aloud, “They’re so sweet, they should have their own commercial.”
I wasn’t speaking sarcastically, nor meant it as anything but the most glowing of compliments. They may be offended, somehow, if by some slim chance they ever read this blog – less likely things happen, but none spring to mind, except maybe the “fall from airliner: live” class of occurrence – but I hope not. They’re just so adorable.
I think of myself and my friends as being fundamentally nice people. This family makes me wonder if we’ve somehow gotten a bit crustier in the soul than I imagined. Ah, well. It makes me happy to see them.
I also mean it about envying the little girl her apparent ace power of being happy about anything whatsoever. “Hi! A comet’s about to hit the Earth and wipe out all life! Have a nice day!”
I mean, what? It’ll hurt less when the comet hits if you die worried?
A bit later when we were coming up to the exit I took Emma off to the side of the path to let a couple of women walking dogs the other way go by. One of them was a very pleasant women I’ve been seeing out on the ditch since I walked Bear there in the early Oughts.
Emma takes her job as my bodyguard so seriously. When these blameless women and their innocuous dogs had gone by, and we started on our way again, she kept stopping to peer suspiciously back. And I imagined the following conversation:
Me: “They’re not going to attack us. They’re too far away.”
Emma: “You don’t know that! They may have miniature lasers in their collars, and whip around and destroy us!”
“In that case we’re screwed. Although I will actually admit a slim possibility, still, I do not worry.”
“See how you are, Daddy? That’s why I worry!”
Poor tyke. She thinks I have no security sense. Well, it’s her job.