In my delivery van,
I drive past the same spot
four times a day.
Here, the road crosses a sluggish stream.
In the spring,
snapping turtles climb up
to the gravel shoulder of the road.
They do not cross the road.
They stop on the gravel shoulder
to lay their eggs, then descend
to their home in the water and mire.
That is their intent.
I see her knobbled head, mouth agape,
as she deposits the fruit of her scaly loins.
I cheer her on as I pass.
Life rises up from the muck
and takes a bow.
On my next run, it pains me to see that
somebody in a car or truck
has swerved off the road, onto the shoulder.
I drive by her, carapace crushed, back severed.
She is left to rot in the sun.
A day or so later, another turtle lays,
shocked and broken on the gravel.
Before the week is out,
four turtles lay smashed,
not two feet apart from one another
under a cloud of flies.
It is a four lane road.
The speed limit is sixty-five miles per hour.
Someone who passes by regularly
has endangered other drivers
and risked their own life and limb,
not once, but four times,
to kill a helpless creature
that meant them no harm.
Why?
Snapping turtles are not cuddly.
They are ill tempered,
foul smelling,
and often play host to leeches.
They are strictly carnivorous.
They hunt fish, ducklings, snails, crayfish,
and scavenge anything that dies and sinks to the bottom.
Their appearance is disturbingly primitive and fierce.
They are sometimes described as prehistoric monsters.
Yet, they mate and procreate.
A lady turtle's armored eyeballs and razor lips
are lovely to her dank and musky suitors.
They have their own sort of passion.
They struggle to survive and have succeeded
for hundreds of millions of years.
They never raid my garden,
never burrow under my porch,
never suck my blood or invade my cupboards.
They deserve a chance.
They deserve to go about their own business,
unnoticed and unmolested.
What sort of mindless, idiot cruelty
makes a person risk rolling their car into a swamp
to kill an animal who meant them no harm?
Why?
I write of monsters
but they do not live in the water.
I offer the following as a comfort to the compassionate ones whose hearts (and shells) break over the heinous savagery of humankind.