abruptly did an about face marching back to the rear of the house. Upon
hearing the screen door slam once more, we continued to execute our
relentless conquest of turtle entrapment for about another hour, comprising
the total time of turtle transport to the cement pond around two hours.
Thinking we had pulled off the perfect caper while eating our peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches at lunch, our Benedict Arnold toddler lookout
ratted us out ruining our well-planned Safari adventure! After our traitor
baby sister had turned on us, we waited for our mother‟s loving but firm
reprisal, hoping for the best but expecting the worse. Sitting there quaking
from fear we awaited, for her verdict when she exposed her hand saying,
“Wait until your father gets home!”
Even though our dread and fear was sincere, it in no way diminished
our preliminary joy of victory at least until our father arrived home that day.
Upon our father and uncles arrival home from work, our beloved mom
met them at the doorway with the tale of our adventurous day, which in turn
caused them to burst into a fit of laughter. Telling my uncle to retrieve the
gun from the work truck and for our mom to get them a cold drink our dear
ole dad circled the house to the turtle‟s prison to carry out our prisoner‟s
execution with me begging and pleading all the way to spare the convicts
meager existence. Laughing at me for crying (I was only ten) they popped
the tops on their drinks taking a big swig. Then my six foot three uncle set
down his drink taking aim at the huge head of the snapping turtle with the
twelve-gauge shotgun, relieving the poor turtle from the torture it had been
enduring since we had shoved it into its prison cell.
Unfortunately, for our new pet my sisters and I knew very little about
taking care of turtles. First off, we thought it was an herbivore instead of a
carnivore, so we threw leaves, branches, and clumps of grass for it to eat.
My sisters and I were not overly smart kids for sure because our second
wrong assumption would have also resulted in the prisoner‟s death, but in a
less humane way. We thought turtles were like fish not understanding that
they were air-breathing creatures like us and they needed a log or island so
they could rest. The cell we had trapped him in had an overflow pipe that
kept the water level of the stagnant water at least eight inches down from
