August may bring the dog days of summer for some, but for me, August has brought turtle days.  I have achieved the rescue and subsequent adoption of a pair of turtles, and this accomplishment gives me a level of satisfaction that is hard to explain, even to myself.  Efficiency crossed with humanitarianism, this appears to have my name all over it.  

Earlier this summer, we arrived at my sister-in-law's house in NJ with a few hours to kill before a family wedding.  We found her in the kitchen, attempting to get over her frustration at all the time spent on turtle care that day.  The turtles, she explained, were acquired by her second daughter and a former boyfriend years ago, a daughter that has since graduated from college, taken a job in NYC and, as a couple months ago, moved to Hoboken on the New Jersey side of the Hudson.  My sister-in-law returned from an extended stay at the beach to find the turtles bone dry.  She can't stand these two little creatures (that couldn't be more than about three inches end-to-end).  She says they give her the creeps.  And although she's been wishing they'd die for quite some time, she wasn't ready to kill them.  She'd carried them to the kitchen to clean out their aquarium and replace their water, and broken the aquarium. She drove to the pet store, bought a new aquarium, and as we walked in, she had just finished resituating them.  Happy as the little armored tanks looked swimming around and climbing on their rocks, as she explained all their clambering around wakes people at night, I could identify with the creepy part.  I wouldn't want creatures of any sort, especially not any with exoskeletons, scuttling around nearby while I slept.          

"Don't you know anyone with younger kids who might like them?" I asked.  

My sister-in-law shook her head. 

"What about giving them to a pet store?" 

My sister-in-law looked dubiously at the two turtles.  "I think they're illegal," she said.  "I don't think they're supposed to be in this country as pets."

My heart went out to the two innocent little critters, death hanging over their little worm heads through no fault of their own. 

So when a few weeks later, the water garden specialist at our local nursery announced he and his son have a frog that is such a regular visitor at one of their own ponds it's become a pet, a light bulb went off.  Would he and his son consider adopting these two turtles? He would, and he and his son would be glad to have them.  

Now we're headed to NJ again.  When I told my sister-in-law I had a home for the turtles and I'd bring them back with me, she sounded pleased, and incredulous.  I'm sure she thought I was nuts.   Why would I care about these two little turtles?  Maybe because I have a soft spot for the under dog, er, under turtle?  Maybe because I believe in recycling and embrace the idea of a circular ecosystem, where everything has a home and a use somewhere?  Or maybe because, really, life is sacred, period.