Turtle Karma

I don't know why, let me just say that right now, first thing.

I don't know why, but whenever I'm out riding a motorbike or even driving around, if I come across a turtle and it's in the road, I stop and pick it up and take it into the bushes on the side of the road in the direction it was headed. I always thought it was good karma, I guess. I'll talk to them and sometimes there's some bucking about on their part, but usually they just hiss at me like a cat and suck all their appendages inside the mobile armor thing. I check out the markings pretty good and note the heft. I've probably handled a few hundred good sized box turtles......they're all pretty cool looking, and they're all different.

One day me and Sam (Sam's my Dad, some other blog will have to handle why he's called Sam) and our buddy Brian were out for a ride in the country around old homey-town Dickson. We were just toodling along, I was out front, and we came upon this monster freaking snapping turtle. A Monster. At least fourteen inches in diameter with a head easily the size of the fist you can make, and a neck long enough so's he could almost reach his ass.

Well I just passed him on by, as did Sam. I looked back in my mirrors and Brian had come to a stop and was flipping down the kick stand on his FXDR, and was gonna' do the good deed that I usually do. I did an nasty stoppie and put a foot down and spun around on a dime, left nine cents change, just to roll up in time and yell "NOOOO!!"

Brian, as you've probably surmised by now, wasn't hip to the ways of the snapper. Snappers are pissed off dinosaurs that are lost in our current time warp. One of the reasons they're called a snapper is 'cause they tend to snap shit in half. Well, this guy took several ugly shots at Brian's desert driver boot, and his out-streched helping hands. He had Brian doing the hoe-down dance right there on Jones Creek Road, all the while hollering, "What the hell?"

I cannot tell a lie, me and Sam laughed our asses off, but I think old Brian learned a valuable lesson about snapping turtles, and all his ten fingers survived the lesson to play jazz guitar another day.........

PWA