Weve got all Gods creatures out here in rural Pennsylvania: bear, fox, way too many deer, and a raccoon that somehow wound up floating face down in the pond in what has become one of our great existential mysteries. But some creatures seem more Godly than others. Ten days ago I came upon a large snapping turtle laying her eggs in a hole on the hillside. Turtles do an interesting thing when theyre in labor; they seem to go into a fugue state, as though theyre secreting a combination analgesic/hypnotic. (Could have stood with secreting some of that myself, a couple decades back.) She took no notice of me while I watched her shovel some dirt over each egg with a back foot, looking like the last of what the dinosaurs left behind. Two hours later and she was gone, back to the pond to savage my bass, I bet. Knowing that snappers have a natural personality somewhere between rabid and crazed, we vowed to excavate and destroy the eggs. But when we went to dig them up the other day, someone had beaten us to it. The hole was open, the dirt littered with the curled remnants of leathery shell. The natural world needs no help from us. It takes care of business on its own.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:16:18 +0000
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