Evil Turtle
Fri, 2016-06-10 05:00
News Staff
Renae Brumbaugh
-- Coffee Talk --
I know what you’re thinking. Since moving to the country, I’ve become the crazy animal lady. And you’re right.
I can’t help it though. We have some pretty strange animals living in my yard, and I can’t control how they behave. Like when very large, ancient dinosaur turtles with long tails hiss and snap at me.
It happened.
And of course, it happened when Superman was out of town and man-child was at camp and there was no one around except me and the woman-child, who is home from college. And if there’s anyone who is as Lucille Ballish as I am, it’s the womanchild. Some say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Well, I say the lipstick doesn’t fall far from the counter.
But I digress.
About a month ago, Superman told me he’d seen a large turtle at the pond, hanging out near the duck house. And since we’ve got ducks sitting on their nests, and we want baby ducks, and since turtles eat duck eggs, we knew we had to “handle” the turtle. But first we had to catch him. And he did a nifty disappearing act every time we got near.
Fast forward to this week. I was making my morning trek around the yard when I noticed a rock by the fence, near the pond. But when I got closer, I realized it wasn’t a rock.
It was some sort of prehistoric reptile.
It had a spiky tail that protruded nearly twelve inches out of its shell. It had four fat, wrinkly feet with long claws. And it had a pointy snout and beady little eyes that looked right at me and—I kid you not—hissed, when I got too close.
That’s when it dawned on me . . . this was our turtle.
I knew I couldn’t “handle” this alone, so I ran back in the house and woke up the woman-child.
Me: Get up! I need your help.
Her: Mom, it’s early. I told you I wanted to sleep late.
Me: It involves saving our ducks.
Her: What are you talking about?
Me: There’s a big turtle, and we have to get rid of it.
Her: (Throwing back covers.) If I help you, you have to promise not to kill it.
Me: Deal.
While she threw on some rain boots with her pajamas, I grabbed a clothes basket and a broom. I thought one of us could hold the basket while the other one sort of swept him in.
I was wrong.
As soon as we approached the thing, he started hissing.
As soon as we stuck the broom in his face, he snapped.
We screamed.
Threw basket and broom in the air.
Ran like the third monkey, trying to make it onto the ark.
After a brief conference, we decided the clothesbasket wasn’t going to work. We needed something without holes in the side. Something with a lid.
“I’ll stay here and make sure he doesn’t escape. You go find something,” I told woman-child.
She disappeared, and I had a brief moment of panic that I might die before she returned. But, fierce, rugged pioneer woman that I am, I knew I had to be brave. Strong. Fight to the end.
It was me against Slash, The Evil Turtle from Dimension X.
I picked up the clothesbasket and held it like a shield in front of me. I grabbed my bristled sword and advanced, my heart pounding like a heavy metal drummer. Before long, I had that T-Rex of a turtle wedged between the fence and the basket. I stuck the broom handle through the basket holes, at an angle, and into the ground on the other side, to pin him in place.
If I could speak turtle, I’m quite sure I’d blush at the nasty words he hissed at me from his cage.
Soon, woman child reappeared with a large storage bin with a lid. Good thinking, woman child.
After more screaming and squealing and running away, only to gather enough guts to try again, we managed to remove the basket and replace it with the bin, upside down, on top of the turtle. I tried to scoot the lid underneath, but Slash was too big and heavy. So we did the next best thing.
We found a couple of boulders—the biggest ones we could lift—and put them on top of the bin, and prayed the thing didn’t collapse.
It didn’t. So we decided Slash could stay right there until Superman got home.
Much later that day, the S-man picked up the bin only to find Slash had dug a tunnel under it. He was still there, dirt flying every which way . . . but another half hour, and he would have been gone. Probably enjoying a nice duck dinner.
But all’s well that ends well . . . at least well for us. Slash is now wreaking havoc in a local conservation lake, and our ducks are safe from his egg-crushing jaws.
The moral of the story is, we have to fight against evil. As scary as it may seem at times, we must remember, when we resist unholy, wicked, sinful things, we have God on our side. He lives in us, and makes us stronger and braver than we thought we could be. When we go into combat against vile, malicious behaviors, we put those behaviors in a cage, and eventually, the people doing those things will either stop, or they’ll take their hateful actions somewhere else.
Slash ended up in a nice, cool body of water. But one day, according to the Book I read, the real evil one will end up in a lake of fire. And he’ll never, ever return.
“Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” James 4:7.