The turtle

Okay so here is a story of the bizarre, sad and funny kind.

First, yesterday Jenn was up at her mother’s house helping her some neighbors of her parent’s with some photo editing for their daughter’s senior pictures and the graduation announcement.

So our family is up there and I had to go help them move the photos onto the laptop (I guess an Olympus memory card for a digital camera is different than an SD card…who knew). When I get there I am met with the following story.

THE BIZARRE
My in-laws live on an acre of land, and are bordered by fields on the south and north sides. As a result, my father in-law exercises his hunting dogs by simply letting them out and run around rather than taking them for a ‘walk’. This way he doesn’t have to hook them up to a leash and because of where they are, the dogs running around do not bother anybody.

Well he had let them out to run, and the German Shorthair named Ruger (more affectionately known as Booger or Boog), all of a sudden goes on point. Well, he does this standing in the field in the southern most corner of the acre of land. Well in normal circumstances when Boog goes on point, he stands there and waits until someone comes to get whatever he is on point for. But because they weren’t hunting, Randy had no interest in walking down there to see what it was. Boog kept looking at Randy as if to plead…”I got something here…please come and get it”. He would look at Randy, then go back to point and hold…then look back at Randy. Finally Boog lost his patience, and just picked up the ‘thing’. Randy commented that he couldn’t figure out what it was. Because it’s a field, there could be many things. There are mice, rats the occasional game bird, and there’s even a family of foxes that live in that field. But it wasn’t any of these. Upon command Boog released his captured prisoner and Randy looked in astonishment at the TURTLE lying on it’s back alive and well.

For those who have never lived in Utah, don’t know biology well or geography well. Turtles aren’t too common in Utah. In fact in my 30 years of life, I don’t think I have ever come across a ‘wild’ turtle in Utah.

THE SAD
Well Randy, recognizing the rarity of the situation, decided to put the turtle in a little cage type thing, so the kids could come and enjoy it. Which they did, so much in fact that Jenn decided that we would keep the turtle. Now for those who have followed this blog a bit, you probably read Jenn’s post about our poor lost bunnies. What she isn’t telling you is that she is really just scratching the surface. We have lost bunnies (3 at the last count), 2 leopard geckos, 1 bearded dragon and countless fish. Not to mention that we have also given away a couple of bunnies (we got them before we had children). That is just in the time we have been married. In addition to this I personally have lost about 10 hamster/gerbils (we had one hamster give birth to a litter of hamster pups), and countless fish and my family could add to the list a couple of birds, a few salamanders, a hedgehog and have given away a couple of dogs. Needless to say I have little luck with pets. The only luck I have had was with a couple of goldfish (one when I was in High School lived for like 2-3 years and only died when we left it outside in the pond during winter) and the other we got for Madison when she was very young, we tried killing that thing but he wouldn’t not die…we ended up giving it away after 2-3 years. NOW WE HAVE A TURTLE!

THE FUNNY/SAD
This chapter is yet to be finished…but this part begins with…last night we all went to see Monsters vs. Aliens (not worth the money)…we left the turtle in his little cage for a couple of hours. We intended on putting him in the aquarium we have when we got home. We got home from the movie…the turtle was gone. The lid to the cage was off, and the turtle was gone. We spent 3 hours last night looking for the turtle…he is gone, disappeared. I guess I now know how a turtle ended up in a field in the middle of Layton. He is magic…he probably escaped from some poor owners home. I can’t imagine he got out of the house…but we sure can’t find him. Of course…I couldn’t have imagined him getting out of the cage either…