“Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars,

 and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.  Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason;

They are not going to become prime ministers or presidents,

and they are not going to become rich, and they will never have any bank balances.

Look at the flowers - for no reason.  It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.” 

Osho

I’ve been fascinated with turtles ever since a tiny box turtle became one of my very first pets at summer camp, so many long years ago.

As I was swimming along in the camp lake one warm sunny summer afternoon, I happened to come upon a small turtle merrily sunbathing and napping on the rocky shoreline.  I was immediately fascinated by it, and I just knew it would make a wonderful pet.

So I quickly scooped up Mr. Turtle and rushed him back to my cabin.  Once there, I soon constructed a very nice home for him in an old cardboard box, and in the following glorious two weeks, Mr. Turtle and I became the very best of friends. 

He slept under my bunk every night, and every morning I would rush out to find him some nice juicy flies for breakfast.   Then the two of us would very merrily go for an ice-cold dip in the lake together.

When my two weeks at summer camp were over, I sadly took Mr. Turtle back to his preferred lake rock, and I let him go.

I still miss that little turtle today since he taught me so much about the joys and mysteries of nature, and I’ve had many turtle pets since that first childhood friend of mine introduced me to their many charms.

And as I grew older, I also began to envy the turtle’s amazing ability to completely immerse itself inside its shell whenever this old world of ours gets just a bit too annoying for them  Through the years, I’ve often wished that I could do the same.

And wise old turtles have been around for an extremely long time, outliving almost every other prehistoric animal that once roamed the Earth with them.  They must be doing something right.

But even with their extremely successful longevity on Earth, many turtle species are now very sadly endangered in this modern world of ours.

Habitat destruction; global warming, fisheries bycatch; lake and ocean pollution; increased boat strikes; and introduced predators around the globe have now wiped out entire turtle populations, or reduced them to mere shadows of their former glory.

I truly believe that we now need to do everything we can to protect these most intriguing animals from complete extinction.

Future generations of nature loving kids will miss out on observing one of Earth’s most interesting residents if we continue to let our modern callousness, and our modern greed, wipe them off the face of this planet – a planet that they have so very happily inhabited for over 100 million years.

©2006, Ed Kostro