The Turtle Samaritan

Drew and I were in the car waiting for the bus to come. We were parked at the end of the complex drive facing Slater Road when a monster black truck with darkened windows came down Slater Road slowly, hesitated, inched forward, then pulled into the drive of the church across the road from us.

I looked at Drew. Drew looked at me. How peculiar. What on earth was the driver doing? It made us both nervous. He backed into Slater Road, almost hitting an oncoming car. Drew locked the doors of the car and I considered shifting into reverse and getting the heck out of there.

The truck driver had turned his vehicle around and parked at the edge of the curb just beyond the complex entrance. He jumped out of the truck and I became really concerned. Drew said, "He must have dropped something out of his truck and is trying to find it." I thought so too for a minute until I realized that his windows had been tightly shut.

He was pacing about in the middle of the road, looking down. He waved his hands about to flag down cars which were screeching to a halt from both directions. Slater Road is a cut through and heavily traveled at 8 am.

Then I saw it. In the middle of the road was a medium sized snapping turtle, wending its way to the wetlands swamp area at the base of Waterford Commons property. The same swampy area that the heron inhabits. The truck driver resisted his every urge to pick the thing up and put it out of danger, eagerly pacing back and forth as if he could somehow hurry that old turtle along. Cars were backed up nearly to the traffic light and well around the corner from the stop sign.

No one honked, gestured, tried to go around - everyone just sat still and waited until the beast was safely on the sidewalk. In minutes, traffic had cleared out, the truck driver had climbed back into his vehicle and taken off, and Drew and I were left alone to watch the gnarled creature amble unconcernedly and laboriously across the grass until he slid far enough down the hillside to be lost from sight in the bushes. We never heard a splash, but I am sure he made it safely to his warm rock.

After Drew climbed aboard the bus, and I was on 84E headed to work, I saw by the side of the road a dead deer. It was folded nearly in half on the shoulder of the road, no blood and guts, but no signs of life either, its head twisted at an awkward angle. It struck me how these two scenarios - life (or the lack thereof) for the slow and life for the quick - are similar to the way cancer can affect your life. Sometimes cancer creeps up on you and slowly progresses in some sort of predictable way. People can see it coming and have time to help you along, to do what can be done to stay out of the way, to take time from their hectic schedules and tolerate a small change in their routines. Other times cancer jumps out of nowhere so quickly that no one has time to stop or get out of the way, and damage gets done.

OK, so its a slightly squirrelly analogy. I guess what I'm trying to say is how much I appreciate it when people stop and take time out of their busy lives to assist with stuff when cancer allots time to be taken. And I am glad the cancer didn't hit me so fast that I didn't get a chance to deal with things before it was too late.

I'll get to work now, with a big THANK YOU for all the turtle samaritans out there who are impacted when a cancer patient crosses your street and you patiently help out.