I got nothin but nothin.

Some randomness:

I hit a bird fight today. I'll bet that's the first and last time you'll ever hear that sentence for as long as you live. I was driving along minding my own business when two small birds that looked like sparrows tumbled halfway across my lane, hovered in midair - flapping wildly and clawing and pecking at each other - and then turned into an exploding ball of feathers as I drove directly into them at 50 mph. It happened so fast I wasn't even positive of what I saw. But sure enough, I had feathers in my grill. So I am, in all likelihood, a murderer. A birderer, if you will. My mother always told us not to fight in the road, and she was right. No good can come of it. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was don't play in the road. Either way, good advice.

Speaking of potential road kill, what the hell is with turtles trying to cross the road? Why would something so slow attempt to cross a busy road during rush hour? I am guessing it is because they don't have wrist watches, or wrists, or because they are just really bad at figuring out their ETA and they thought they had plenty of time to beat traffic.

There have been quite a few instances where I've had to stop the car, grab the turtle and shuttle him to the other side before he got flattened. In the case of snapping turtles the size of hubcaps, I didn't so much "grab the turtle"* as "poke him in his turtle ass with a stick from really far away while getting snapped and hissed at." Those prehistoric-lookin' bastards can fight back, and sometimes they really don't want to go where their best interests lie.

I would also like to know what makes the muddy patch of polluted scumwater on the other side of the road better than the muddy patch of polluted scumwater you happen to be in. Had I been born a turtle with a burning need to find out if the old legends are true and the swamp on my side of the road truly does suck in comparison to the holy nirvana reputed to be on the other side of that 36-foot stretch of blistering blacktop, I would hope I'd have the good sense to wait until nightfall. That way, I might actually have a shot of making it over there without getting flash-fried in my shell or flattened by two tons of rolling steel.

Don't head out at 4:30 in the afternoon and try to beat the commuter rush is all I'm saying. You're a fucking turtle. You're nature's speed bump. Realize that you're slow and plan ahead. Wait for 2 a.m. on a Sunday night during a rainstorm or something. Also, do not pull all your shit inside your shell and stop for a breather when you're only half way across.

If you're movin', you're groovin' -- if you're stopped you're popped.

Think of it as a Mount Everest summit attempt - you have to plan it thoroughly and time it exactly right. But this is probably wasted advice because I doubt that there are many turtles reading my blog. From what I've seen splattered on the road, turtle brains are actually pretty small.

*I realize that the term "grab the turtle" sounds dirty, but it's really not.