The Life-Lessons I Learned From My Pet Turtle

A Yellow-Bellied Slider Who Had a Lot to Say About Life

It was a hot summer day, sometime in mid-July of last year, and the sunshine was beaming brightly, cutting through the wet, humid Florida air to shine down upon my back and shoulders with a warmth that baked into my flesh. It was almost searing, as one might imagine. It was the perfect day to be out gardening so I decided to take most of the day off and get some plants arranged, water everything, move anything that looked like it was getting too much sun, and plant some more seeds.

As I passed the center of the garden area I noticed a mushroom, a very big mushroom on the outer rim of a circular structure designed with meticulous planting. At a glance from about 25-feet, it looked like a mushroom straight out of Super Mario Brothers. I giggled to myself. I kept walking for a minute and then, as my curiosity got the best of me, I turned around and decided to go see it up close.

I wanted to see what kind of mushroom it was, whether it was edible, psychedelic, or poisonous. But as I got closer, I suddenly noticed that it had a stubborn-looking head poking out of it staring up at me with these cocky, almost arrogant eyes, as if it wanted to challenge me to a fist fight. It was a yellow-bellied slider and a cute little baby one, at that. He didn’t move. He just sat there staring at me with its eyes wide and fierce-looking. As I approached, he tucked into his shell, fearful that I might hurt him. But alas, that’s the last thing I wanted to do. I was overjoyed at meeting my new friend and I gently pet his shell a little before hoisting him up into my hands to say hello. He fit easily into the palm of my open hand and just like that, he changed the entire trajectory of my day and the ensuing months which would follow.

Upon inspection, I noticed that the back of his shell was cracked toward his bum. My heart sank as I wondered what could have done this to my new little buddy. How did he end up here? I wondered. In the middle of my garden, locked up with several fences, how did he sneak in? I don’t think he was able to dig under the fence, the boards and chain links drive too far deep into the ground. A mystery was afoot!

I smiled at him, he frowned at me; that’s how reptiles do. We were perfect friends.

Of Humans and Turtles…

In life, we meet people in such an unexpected fashion. We never know quite what we’re getting ourselves into when we start a new job with brand new coworkers, when we spark up a new romantic fling or kick off a new friendship that seems like a breath of fresh air. We don’t know when it’ll end, what will come about, or what we will get and give out of each new venture with another conscious being. I remember I used to try to hold on to friends for as long as possible, that was until I learned that sometimes, you’ve just got to let some people go. And, I’ve got to tell you, my experience with this turtle would turn out to be just like my relationships with people have been (and will be) over the years and I learned a lot from it.

How can a turtle who can’t even talk have taught me such incredible lessons? I’m sure you’re wondering that now. Well, my friends, take a seat and allow me to explain. This was no ordinary turtle experience, I must say…

I picked him up and brought him inside, placing him into the bathtub. I drew him some lukewarm water and he began to swim around as if he was in a lake, his natural habitat. His adorable eyes peered up at me. His cracked shell couldn’t be a good thing, I’d thought, if a predator were to come along, that shell might not hold up against an attack and, after all, this is Florida, where fierce animals are in abundance. Not to mention the birds.

We have the kinds of birds that have long beaks designed to peck through the weak spots in a shell, birds capable of swooping up my newfound best friend with a swoop and cracking the shell to eat him. In fact, in a discussion, my girlfriend and I came to the conclusion that he was probably swimming in the lake nearby when a bird swooped him up and was flying across and above the garden when it accidentally dropped him, cracking the shell on impact, if it hadn’t already been cracked from the bird’s beak.

That’s It!

The decision was then made. “Mi casa es su casa, little man,” I told him, and my bathroom would thus be forfeited and now had become the domain of the turtle. It was his space whenever I wasn’t using it and we would share it when I was, like a couple of somewhat responsible beings. He needed time to heal and recover from his injuries. Little did I know that this would be the start of one of the most beautiful friendships I’d ever have, a bonding experience that would reinforce one of the most valuable lessons of life.

We became best friends. I decided to name him after the 5th-century BCE philosopher who popularized the idea that everything is always changing and nothing stays the same, and thus, Heraclitus he was thenceforth called. The human Heraclitus once said, “You can’t step into the same river twice,” and I thought that my little friend might enjoy the metaphor considering he’d most certainly come from a river himself.

Heraclitus the Great!

Over the ensuing months, he inhabited my bathroom while he shed the pieces of his shell and they grew their scales back as robust as they’d once been before his injury. When I bathed, I would forgo my usual essential oils and decked-out, good-smelling bubble bath in favor of plain, old, boring water. He kept me company. Heraclitus would swim around in the bath with me and would dock himself on my hand as I sat and relaxed and thought about what to write. I bathed with swim trunks on and he’d come land on my legs and sit in my lap and stare up at me. He had fun swimming around and especially liked it when I would run the water and he’d twirl about as the flowing water ruptured throughout the tub. We’d get out and I’d clean his shell and would feed him the turtle food I bought from the pet store.

Sometimes, I’d take him into my room and he’d hang out on the bed with me while I wrote my stories. I wrote one about the original Heraclitus with him in my lap, a touching moment that warmed my heart in so many ways.

I found myself a small pet leash on Amazon so I could take him for walks and make sure he was getting enough sun and exercise. I tell you, I loved this damn turtle so much, it might be a bit unhealthy, but, in my defense, look at that cuteness. He eventually healed up pretty nicely and was back to his happy, mobile, healthy, turtle self. We’d grown closer and closer until the day of reckoning came…

Taking a walk together like we did every morning…

Building an Outdoor Sanctuary

Obviously, I couldn’t just keep a wild-caught turtle locked up in a bathroom forever. So, I devised a plan. I took a massive tub from the hardware store and placed it in the back yard. I bought some stones and lined the tub and filled it with water. I don’t personally believe in keeping animals against their will, so I set out a couple of logs that provided a bridge to freedom so Mr. Heraclitus could go in and out of the tub with ease. He could go on adventures, if he wanted, he could return, if he wanted, and just live his little turtle life. I figured, if I provided him with food, water, and a safe place to stay, he could make up his own mind, if he wanted to climb out and go off into the big, dangerous world of uncertainty, he could do so, and if he wanted to stay, he could also do so. It was important that he made the choice on his own.

His fortress was built and I retired inside to get to work, clean up the home a bit, and do my thing. I was content that I’d given him such an awesome place that felt like it took hours to build. I was happy he was well and established.

A few hours later I went to check up on him and he was gone. He had made his choice to climb the logs and trek toward freedom, probably off to go find some female turtles he could party with in a pond somewhere. I searched around near his area and he was totally gone. Off into the wilderness, he went. I never did figure out how he got in or out, meaning that, in a way, he was more clever than I could ever be.

Godspeed, Heraclitus…Godspeed!

As I stared down at the empty domain I’d built for the little man, my heart somewhat sank, but I felt somewhat proud of myself for doing the right thing. The reality is, you can’t keep things against their will, be they turtles or people. This is analogous to every relationship that all of us will ever have, with everyone. You can’t force people to stay. You can’t trick them into it, you can’t bribe them into it, you can’t do anything but be the best version of you that you can be, offering what you have to offer, and allowing them to make up their own minds of what makes them happy and what doesn’t. Hell, you can’t even force turtles to stay, at least not ethically, anyway, there’s no use in trying to coerce a person into staying around you or with you.

It wasn’t my choice to make, it was his. It struck me, what I’d already known for quite a long time, that given a long enough timeline, almost all, if not all of our friendships, our relationships, and our bonds with others must come to an end. But this is only to make way for the new. Any parent who remembers the difficulty in letting their child go to school for the first day or sending them off to camp or college will understand exactly what I’m talking about. We need to understand that change is the only constant in life in order to be ready for changes when they come.

I sense we’ve lost touch with the cyclical time of our ancestors. We’ve abandoned it for largely the concept of linear time which adorns our charts and graphs and images all over, the image of a long, linear trajectory where each day falls in succession, never clearing out the old, never giving birth to the new. They understood as the original Heraclitus understood, that all things work in cycles. Everything, all moments are temporary, but if we stop and pay attention, there are patterns in nature that can be observed.

You can’t step into the same river twice because the second time you do, it’s not the same river, the water is different, the fish are different, and yes, the turtles are different. So too will it be that tomorrow is a little bit different from today, although the days of our lives change much more slowly than a rapidly flowing river...

This was actually the cornerstone of the original Heraclitus’ philosophy. “All is in flux,” he said, “Nothing remains the same.” This includes the time we have with those we love. We tend to go on throughout our lives taking those we care about for granted until someday, they’re gone, and I think it’s wise to be mindful of the fact that nothing in our lives will be around forever. Nothing at all.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t trek through my yard and stop and take an extra minute to look for him, maybe just to say hi and leave it at that. And that’s how we’ve got to be in life. No matter how much we love the things we have, we have to be willing to let them go, especially if they’re alive. We cannot be dependent and we especially cannot be dependent to the point where we make someone or something else miserable. Ultimately, I’d like to think that the Providence of the Universe, fate itself had stepped in and put Heraclitus in my path so that I may help him heal, get better, and then the time came when our relationship was just no longer feasible, not something that could be maintained equally and one that would be mutually beneficial. Sometimes, we’ve got to let others go so that they may flourish, no matter how much it aches and kills us inside, because that’s what it means to love another being. Paradoxically, we must be willing to let those we love go in order to set them free, free enough to choose to stick by us. All the cliches are true, I’ve got to say.

It was then his time to trudge his own path, albeit slowly, as turtles do.

Not only did I learn and reinforce a lesson of life that day, the lesson that we can’t take the people and animals we love for granted, but I also learned a lesson about myself. I learned that I’m not the type to selfishly cling to a creature that wants to be free. I simply refuse to and I think that’s something that I can be deeply proud of. Hold on to those you care about now, while you have them. Take this time and spend it with those you love and thank me for it later. I promise, you won’t regret it.

Thank you for reading. Here’s the story about the original Heraclitus that I’d written with my turtle Heraclitus, the pre-socratic Greek philosopher from the 5th-century BCE, for those interested…