Turtlely enough for the Turtle Club (775 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 0.57 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by minustwodie (View user info) at 2005-05-02 16:51:10 EDT
I've been here eight minutes, waiting for a turtle to come out of its shell.
Its been that kind of day. I called the office at four-thirty AM to let tell them know I would not come in today. It shouldn't be a surprise. I'm not going in tomorrow either.
I rolled out around four and headed south to the Hillsborough River, east of Tampa near Zephyrhills.
I pulled off of the road, loaded my pack and lifted the bike out of the bed of the truck. I was off to look for turkeys. It was about a two-mile ride down into the river swamp, a shallow ford and another mile to the other side of the swamp where I thought I might find some birds.
The pine flatwoods have a spicy smell to them in the morning, like a carrot cake without the cloying scent of the icing. The fog hung above the saw palmettos, keeping the light out and the smells in, thick around me as I rode along.
I found them already down off the roost. I heard the distant, soft sounds of hens feeding off from the roost trees toward nesting areas. The dominant males demonstrated their presence to hens and one another with sporadic gobbles as each followed a group of hens. I listened intently, focusing on what I heard above all other senses. I came to find from whence the birds came and to where they would go so that I could like in ambuscade tomorrow morning.
The hens fed toward their nests with the gobblers strutting along behind.
Each male following his own harem and booming out one gobbler to another.
The birds' sounds told me from whence they came and where they would go this morning and tomorrow morning when I would wait in ambuscade.
I registered movement in the brush. Searching in between the branches and leaves, I saw two antler-bald bucks browsing toward me. I waited until the deer were both looking away from me before I slowly squatted to the ground. I tried to tell the deer to leave. The deer fed closer to me. I sat motionless, hoping the deer would not snort an alarm before the turkeys left the area.
The turkeys took their time while I waited. The gobblers became silent after they left the security of the roost. I could not hear anything over the racket of the feeding deer.
Now I played a game of trying to hide myself from the deer so they would not sound an alarm. I wanted nothing to disturb the turkeys so that the birds might not change to another roost area or travel another route when leaving the roost.
The deer fed to within about thirty yards and began to stare at me. The vegetation prevented them going downwind, so they walked around me in a semi-circle, testing the wind and trying the usual tricks used when a suspected predator does not belie its camouflage. One bobbed its head while staring at me. The other pretended to look away while scratching an itch only to snap its head back to see if I changed position. I'd seen almost all of this before, except for the pretending to eat while keeping both eyes one ploy. That was a new one on me.
The turtle has both eyes on me too. It's not sure about me. I think this paper is flapping too much.
I sat until the deer gave up trying to get me to betray myself and the turkeys were gone. The deer fed around me and edged alternately in until they were so close I knew they could see my eyes blink. With the turkeys gone, I decided to see how much movement I could make before the deer ran. I found I could turn my head slowly to watch them and even more slowly wipe away a mosquito before the bucks got twitchy and looked like they were about to bolt.
Sounds on the other hand, I could make all I wanted. I bleated like a hot doe. The bucks looked. I grunted like a buck following a doe. The younger buck walked up to within a few feet of me and started rubbing its bare head on a tree. I bleated again. The older buck approached. They stepped around me looking for the doe. I bleated and grunted some more. By, the time it was over, the deer were standing right next to me and junior tried to hump the big boy.
Tired and cramped from sitting still for so long, I snorted a few times and the deer left. I spent the rest of the morning sorting out the sign the turkeys left and scouting for other birds. I am as sure as I can be of what those birds will do when I come back in the morning, but its never a sure thing with turkeys. Turkeys of the Osceola sub-species, like their namesake, are referred to as "swamp ghosts" for a reason.
I was riding out of the swamp when I saw a jake standing in the middle of a logging road. I stopped about one hundred yards away and crabbed into the bushes to wait for the bird to feed away. Normally a turkey would have seen me first and hauled ass, but this one would not even take a step. Jakes, being immature males and thereby mentally retarded, just stood in the middle of the road not looking at anything in particular. I did not want to spook it or any other turkeys that might be in the area, but after fifteen minutes of waiting for it to yield the right-of-way it was still standing in the middle of the road and I was ready to go get some lunch. I finally stepped into the road and waited for it to run off.
The jake left, well, the jake sort of left. It ran a little ways and then stopped to test each of its eyes on me in turn. I got back on my bike and started back for the truck chasing the gangly bird down the road. It was not long before I had the road to myself.
It is a lovely way to end a morning, riding along "no-hands" and enjoying the weather, but I began to think about how I should probably feel guilty. Being an adult with grown-up bills and a grown-up job isn't supposed to be this much fun.
Then I saw the turtle. I locked up the rear wheel and laid the bike down in the middle of the road. Walking back to it, I was hoping it would be an alligator snapping turtle. One as big as this is very aggressive and will bite an inch this stick in two in the blink of an eye. This box turtle won't even come out of its shell. It's not my fault, though. I am blaming it on those skydivers up there. They're several hundred feet up and screaming their heads off.
So that has been my day, riding my bike, playing tricks on deer and waiting for a turtle to come out of its shell.
User Reviews
Submitted by TheSunGod (user info) at 2005-05-25 12:26:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
hoo-rah, man. i live over in st pete. you ever want to go lookin for turtles and crazy woodland critters, leave me a message on one of my posts. i live for that stuff.
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2005-05-19 17:14:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
here ya go, bud: http://www.ubersite.com/m/66540#1336310
and seriously, while this isn't "mainstream uber" it also isn't mainstream anything. no one would appreciate this. not even your mother.
Submitted by urbaneruralite (user info) at 2005-05-19 12:10:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I carry a notebook in my daypack when I hunt, scout or hike. The above is factual. In the time it took me to hear the turtle crawling and bring my bike to a halt, I had the structure of the piece laid out in my mind. The rest was writing as dictated by the story.
If you like words, then here are a few more: style, colloquial and vocabulary.
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2005-05-18 16:52:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
haha, this is really shitty. noun/verb agreements are messed up, the story is boring, and your use of words...i mean come on. Cloying...ambuscade...did you have a dictionary in your lap while you wrote this?
i have the feeling this is a joke. it has to be. no one could conciously ramble this much without having some intent behind it. my guess is you wrote something, looked up a bunch of synonyms, then mixed the sentances around...just to see if anyone would look at this mess and say "good work!"
i won't say it...but since you're close to being my all time number one hater, i'll throw you a +2!
Submitted by thorpe (user info) at 2005-05-03 09:12:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Auto Turtle +2
Submitted by ThineJericho (user info) at 2005-05-03 01:06:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It only really deserves a plus one at max.. but you put more thought and time into this than some of the bullshit that is lauded with +2's, so fuck it .. to balance shit out a little.
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2005-05-02 20:00:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
SB "Turtleish"
Submitted by Sassmasterr (user info) at 2005-05-02 19:45:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
-2 for defacing such a funny line (well, the only funny line in that movie, but hey...)
Submitted by Morlock (user info) at 2005-05-02 17:02:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
I can't believe I read the whole thing. Deer, turtles and turkies.
+4 for skipping work.
-5 for skipping work to chase birds, deer and turtles and not to chase girls, kill something or sit on the ass god gave you.