Little Lessons from Turtles

We've just gotten back from staff retreat. One of the activities of staff retreat was catching turtles and making an imitation Chinese wet market (see picture below) before releasing them when we had to go home. In just those few short days, I noticed a lot things about the little shelled creatures. Some just fascinating, but some applicable to life.

-It was fascinating to notice that turtles have personalities too. When you picked them up, their reactions ranged from trying to swim away as fast and hard as they could, to tucking inside their shell and not coming out until they were placed back into the bucket.

-Chicken Neck turtles are not pacifists. Our turtle tally for the 1/2 week was 8 painted turtles and 3 chicken neck turtles. The chicken necks were donning full camo; shells covered in algae (picture below), yet none of the painted turtles appeared in such military attire. However, while pacifism may be in painted turtle doctrine, I had doubts as to how much it is practiced after seeing a one of them put a fellow turtle into a monster headlock. Fortunately, the other critter was fine and pulled off a victory in the race the two of them were in.

-Persistence is not always a virtue. "Aim high and dream big" people say, but I say that constantly evaluating walls you are climbing is a good idea, too. One evening, Andy and I walked past the two buckets of turtles and saw one of them motionlessly lying upsidedown on the bottom of the bucket. Thinking it might be dead, Andy tapped it and it moved. Then he turned it back on it's feet. The first thing the turtle did was go up to the wall and start scratching it's way up the side of the bucket until it toppled over, right back into it's former predicament. This wasn't the only time during the few days that we had to give it a hand. Isn't there a point and time when you have to take step back and say, "You know, maybe this just isn't my forte. I just might be a lot more succesful if I learned to excell right where I am instead of putting everything on the line to try and find out if the water is clearer on the other side of the bucket."

-Know your strengths and use them. When approaching a turtle in a canoe, their best defense was to swim away into deep water/muddy, mirky water where we couldn't see them. This worked quite well, as 99% of the time, if we didn't net it the first time, we were unsuccessful at chasing it down. Most knew this, and exploited this advantage very well. However, as we glided through shallow water towards one particular turtle, it saw us coming and slipped off the log it was sunning itself on, and out of sight. Swim away in almost any direction, or even stay still, and the odds were all for it, but suddenly, I saw the round shape of a turtle shooting through the water right towards me. A simple motion of stabbing the net into the lake bottom right in front of it, and lifting up, and it was caught. So lesson learned, know what you do well, and do it.

-Finally, DON'T PROCRASTINATE!!! If you are lazily taking your time going back into the water, and are far behind the rest, Audrey just might decide that you need some help and shot put you into the middle of the lake.