Think on This

By Sandy Long

One less

“The tail! Grab her by the tail!” Skip is shouting as Jim tries to maneuver the sizable snapping turtle into a plastic cat carrier. No easy feat, we conclude, watching with a bit of anxiety as the gnarly noggin whips out, lightening-quick, jaws snapping shut on nothing, thankfully, but air. Our goal is getting this old girl away from the road’s edge, where she has begun excavating an egg site in the loose materials next to the macadam strip. After a few fumbles, the hissing reptile takes a ride back toward the lake to try again.

Walking home with the empty carrier, I’m wondering how she will fare. Better than the turtle I moved from the road last week, I hope. With something gelatinous oozing from its mouth, that one wasn’t looking too lively. And better than the fawn melting back to flat, where it fell after encountering a car.

The impact of our actions as we rush through our busy agendas plays out most visibly along our roadways, littered with carcasses. The chipmunks and squirrels who dart in front of us; the opossum ambling too slowly in the dark; the deer standing frozen in the headlights as we round the blind curve; the big frog (I kid you not) that struck my car one night. Motoring along a rain-slick road, I glimpsed the ample amphibian leaping toward my car’s front quarter panel, his arc ending in a dull thud against the metal.

You could say it’s just their dumb luck, that we, as superior beings with the sense to know better, got the best part of the deal. But perhaps that’s the point. Being blessed with awareness, we are also given choices. How, then, can we absolve ourselves of a failure to act with some measure of concern?

Without a doubt, we’ve all got places to go, people to see and less time than we need to do it all. But most change begins with small simple actions. Would it be asking too much of us to ease off the pedal, to walk when possible, to pull over and cautiously move a creature to safety? Could we spend a little time thinking about how we might help those not gifted with the ability to reason, like snapping turtles who mistake crushed stone coated with oil for appropriate egg sites?

Either way, it’d be pretty easy to slow down today, to carpool, or even, not to go at all. One less trip to the store, one less car on the road, one less gallon of gas, one less pound on our posteriors. One more turtle, pheasant, opossum or toad making it safely across the road.