Just Outta Place

I Want To Keep It, But Knew I Couldn’tSomethings are just out of place and Saturday was no exception. I was coming back home from getting ice cream and up my old block where I saw something scuttle into the street. I slowed down and saw that it wasn’t some random trash or leaves but a black turtle. I stopped traffic and put the turtle in my backseat since I was only two blocks away from my apartment.

I knew from the get-go I could keep the turtle eventhough as a kid I’ve always wanted a pet turtle. But the tutle didn’t belong in a cage. In the few hours it spent crawling around my kitchen sink I wonder where he came from. I’m not that close to the lake for a turtle to crawl and it wasn’t a land turtle. Crawling into traffic, the turtle was just out of place.

On the sun had set and the air was cooler, I took the turtle in a old show box to this park in downtown Hammond. It was a nice size man-made pond/lake with fish so it habitable. I place him down in the grass and he scurried off into the water. I watched him get accustomed to his new home before he dove off into the murkiness. I knew I couldn’t have kept him, just like me he would have been out of place.