05.03.04 - 10:09 am

watching you walking, is like watching a flame....

so here it is. days just keep going by. things keep happening. and the only way of recording my experiences is through synapses and chemical storage in my brain. unfortunately, i need to use this method more frequently, because this will last longer.

i have two turtles. gizmo and kirby. gizmo was my christmas present back in 1991, following our move from wes linn to tualatin. he quickly became a terrific companion. years went by and he experienced highs and lows in our relationship, and his care. highschool came around and i took him to newspaper editing nights. he blended in with the dark carpet, and ill admit, i kicked him across it, unintentionally. he drove with me to arizona. he roamed desert landscapes 2500 miles from where he had lived for 9 years. then i moved him to an apartment where he was allowed to live cageless, and he savored every bit of it. i would come home from work, and he would come out so i could feed him.

once, i didnt have time to take my garbage out, so i left it on the floor, tightly sealed in a white plastic garbage sack.

when i returned home, there was a hole chewed in the sack. a foot away was a zip lock bag with a steak contained inside. and having chewed through that plastic bag and eating the old, probably rotting steak inside, was none other than gizmo. the savage.

on the drive home from arizona to oregon, during the course of 5 days he crawled around at drus feet since, a box was too restricting. we stopped in las vegas, and he played in the fountains at the base of the stratusphere. he even made it to the top of that.

one time he had worms. under my bed he was defecating everywhere. and, squirming around embedded inside, little white worms. terrifically disgusting.

gizmo had been collected from the wild. and i could tell because he had these two dents in his shell, on opposite sides. and apparently thats from this little pronged device that they, as in the collectors, use to grab the turtles before they toss them in a burlap sack or whatever.

what about the other turtle? kirby? oh yeah. him.

my neighbor up the street wanted a reptile. he had his heart set on a snake, such as a corn snake or boa constrictor. but he just didnt have the drive to take care of either. he needed a low maintenance pet. a turtle was perfect for him. so, getting pumped for weeks, he finally got one. a large golden female box turtle. female, because within a few days it had laid eggs outside in his yard, where it was most frequently found. tucker, my neighbor, would let the turtle loose in his fenced in backyard and then lose it. for weeks at a time. and then it would pop up somewhere buried under some dense foliage or whatnot.

eventually, he grew tired of the turtle, and by eventually i mean, like two months later. he just let the turtle loose in his backyard and didnt really care what happened next. so i said i would take her. so i house sat and fed their dog for two weeks, and my payment....the tutrle. awesome.

so i never really wanted this turtle to begin with, i was merely assuming responsibility for it.

this was in the mid 1990s, i dont really recall the year, but kirby was in my posession between four and six years after i received gizmo. she was the outcast. the neglected. not so much dispised, but in the standards of admiration and appreciation in comparison to gizmo, kirby was shafted, heartbroken, isolated, depressed and its feeling neglected constantly. gizmo was the popular kid in school, and kirby was the one with the eye liner, wearing black t shirts that said, "life is pain". the turtle didnt even have a set name until 2001 when dru decided it should be kirby and that i should keep it that way. so it goes.

regardless, after months of darkness in their cage here in corvallis, negected due to my insatiable thirst for saltwater.

so i decided one monday afternoon to construct a pen in the backyard. i found some old boards. some shingles. and a few rusty, bent nails i pulled from the boards.

using a hammer, i dug the outline, the hole for the water dish, and hammered the frame together. it was shallow, the rim of the frame only 4 or 5 inches above the ground. i pounded shingles into the ground all around the frame, as an underground barrier to prevent digging.

however, my sole preventative and fear was completely irrelevented when just a few days ago, gizmo was found missing. gone. vanished. not in his cage.

just about an hour prior, i had gotten in my car to retreat to work, only to find my car stereo stolen. from directly infront my house. between 1 and 4 pm. in broad daylight. what the fuck? it was a crappy cd player stereo anyways, but it was mine. it was infront my house. and it contained my creedance clearwater cd.

ultimately, i could care less about the cd player. the point was, the turtle was missing. my turtle. the most important one.

so i got off work, used a flashlight and searched everywhere thoroughly.

to no avail.

well, at least i have, you....kirby. meh.

and now look what happened. shes gone too. just an empty cage in the backyard. fliers up, but no response.

i have a hard time believing that they both figured out how to climb out. thats not to say i dont believe in the possibility that it could have happened. but its sort of weird that for two weeks they stayed in their outside pen, under their darkened lair, and made no attempts that i could see for escape. but then suddenly they were gone. its baffling.

id be a liar if i said this was the first time.

once, a few years back, for a month and a half, gizmo was on his own. feeling the euphoria of freedom in suburban tualatin. for a month and a half he crawled anywhere and everywhere he wanted. i was feeding him, then went inside and forgot, and he was gone. he had crossed the street. and for a month and a half just walked anywhere he pleased. feasting on slugs and worms no doubt.

but i got him back. a month and a half later. i dont recall a better feeling.

so now, 13 years from our first encounter, i am without him again. i had plans to be 80 years old, and still have my childhood turtle.

in my neighborhood in tualatin, i knew the neighbors. there were fences. no strangers.

here in corvallis, there are no fences. dozens of people walk to and from campus every hour. i dont know any of them. and any one of them could have walked by, seen a turtle out cruising around, and taken him home and claimed him as theirs. thats what annoys me the most.

thats what leaves me the most empty. dont get me wrong, its important that hes taken care of if someone finds him, but, i dont want him to be taken care of well by someone else, i want him taken care of by me.

my next door neighbor jan, just started telling someone, "yeah, i just caught him." i stood up and looked outside hoping she was on her way to my house, shouting to the spy across the street her delight in catching my little reptile, but despair enveloped my joy, as she was merely referring to her dog.

i guess now i wait.

maybe one day he'll be back......