My husband, who knows more about animals than a city boy should, has been telling anyone who will listen about his recent experience with a turtle. Not just any turtle, but a big old snapping turtle. It happened at the golf course. My husband is amazed the turtle didn’t pull his head inside his shell and take cover like most do. Instead, he stood tall on all four legs, head held high, gave my husband the raspberries and walked boldly across the road. My husband can’t get over the attitude of that reptile.
     All this turtle talk reminds me of my childhood pet, Rosy. Purchased at Woolworth’s, she was the size of a silver dollar and probably cost much less than that. Her shell had been painted red, with a yellow rose. I took really good care of that little thing but one day she disappeared. I looked all over the house but couldn’t find her anywhere.
     I loved that pet and cried my eyes out when I realized she was never coming home. My four younger siblings promised they had nothing to do with Rosy’s departure but I wasn’t sure. Had one of them played with Rosy and forgotten to put her back in her glass house? The turtle had gone missing about the same time my father began laying down a brick path along the eastside of our house. All summer long, Dad carried bricks from a pile in the driveway to the slope that ran between our house and the next-door neighbor’s.
     Not long after every brick was in place, I found my missing turtle. Stuck between two of the bricks on that pathway. My friends and I and gave Rosy a proper funeral and buried her in the garden in the back yard. I forgot abut turtles for awhile.
     Until my 18th birthday, the summer between high school and college. My heart throb proudly presented me with a birthday gift he promised would take my mind off our separation when he left for college in Indiana. I couldn’t wait to open the huge box.
     The holes cut into the cardboard should have been a giveaway. Inside were a glass bowl, rocks, a shaker of food and an ugly gray turtle. I put on the biggest fake smile I could muster. Once he left for school, I paid my two little sisters a quarter a week to feed the turtle and clean the bowl. Certain they’d been the ones who took Rosy outside to play many years before, I hoped for the best.
     I never asked if that turtle was a serious gift or payback for the previous Christmas when I had given him a bottle of cologne—a gift that said I like you but don’t want you to know how much. He gave me a thin silver box from a fancy downtown jewelry store. Inside was a beautiful gold cross on a delicate chain. It said everything I wanted to hear.
     Not like that plain old gray turtle. Every time I looked in his bowl, he seemed to be giving me the raspberries.