Ecce Signum

I started this week wondering what I would write about for this update. Nothing of note had happened recently and I was feeling the late-summer doldrums, even though we are only halfway through summer.

Then I went for a walk.

The office I work from is in downtown Grand Rapids, and in the rare moments when my workload allows a break from staring at screens and flailing away at a keyboard, I like to walk along the Grand River. Several walking paths and boardwalks line the river for several blocks on each bank, and despite being in the middle of the city, wildlife exists here in abundance.

Usually, though, the more aquatic animals tend to stick close enough to the water to dive in when approached by something dangerous, which humans are by definition.

So I was quite surprised, when walking east across the Blue Bridge, to see a baby snapping turtle making its way west across the same bridge.

There are not many pedestrians in downtown Grand Rapids on a Wednesday afternoon, which was probably the only reason why the turtle had not yet been stepped on or run over by a bicycle or scooter. Had it not been moving it would have looked exactly like a rock, or some discarded takeout, or an old wad of chewing gum.

I have seen baby snapping turtles along the Grand River several times in past years, but always near or above the Sixth Street Dam, where the water is much easier to access. And also usually several weeks later in the year. So seeing this little beast in the middle of a bridge, quite a distance from any easy access to the water, was doubly surprising.

Not wanting to see Wee Gamera get squashed, I picked it up and walked across to the west side of the Blue Bridge near the Public Museum, where I made my way to the edge of the river and carefully let it go at the edge of the water. To my relief it immediately scrambled in and swam away.

I felt pleased with myself for a job well done, and walked back across the bridge toward the office.

So imagine my surprise to see two more baby snapping turtles heading my way! One was already on the bridge, and the other was near a flowerbed berm and a bemused bike rider who had swerved at the last moment to avoid the turtle. I had already picked up the one nearest to me, and showed it to the rider before I scooped up the other turtle. We talked for a couple of minutes and came to the conclusion that there was a turtle nest nearby. We couldn’t find it after a quick couple of minutes of looking. So the biker rode on, and I took the turtles back across the river to the same place I had released the first one.

No new turtles greeted me as I walked back toward the office, so I carefully searched all of the flower beds – the only nearby places that weren’t covered in concrete – for more turtles. I had almost given up when, almost a hundred feet from the edge of the river, I found a small hole in the mulch and wood chips, out of which was crawling a small turtle.

Apparently my turtle-hunting behavior had attracted attention, because at this point two security guards approached me and asked me what I was doing. I showed them the turtle I had just picked up, and pointed out the nest, which was still showing signs of activity. I told them what I had done so far, and that the baby turtles seemed determined to cross the bridge rather than jump off the concrete embankment which was technically a much shorter route to the river.

Instead of walking all the way back across the river to release the latest hatchling I jumped the fence, which had been locked some time ago to prevent people from accessing the river bank and river walk on the east side of the water. I let the turtle go, and when I turned around, the security guards were right behind me. For a moment I thought they were going to arrest me for technically violating a city ordinance, but instead one of them handed me another turtle. We had a good laugh about the situation, then went back up to the bridge where the guards contacted the Grand Rapids Downtown Ambassadors to send someone to guard the turtle nest and rescue any additional baby turtles.

I introduced myself to the guards, and they told me they were private security for the city, which was not something I realized Grand Rapids had. I didn’t say anything to them, but I really don’t like the idea of private security monitoring the downtown area. One of the guards said that they recently increased their patrol area to the east side of Division Avenue, and south past the Van Andel Arena.

Finally, an hour into my fifteen minute walk, I returned to the office and completed my work for the day.

I left the office a little before 6:00 in the afternoon, and instead of heading back home I walked back over to the turtle nest. It looked significantly dug up, as if either a LOT of babies had hatched in the five hours since my last visit, or there had been some human intervention. I assumed that any eggs that were going to hatch had hatched, and walked onto the Blue Bridge, intending to take the long way home.

And, of course, I found another baby snapping turtle, just as it crawled onto the bridge.

So I scooped it up, hopped the fence again (which was much easier thirty years ago) and released the turtle into the river. This turtle was warm to the touch and lethargic, and obviously suffering ill effects from the afternoon heat, but it perked up and swam away when I put it in the water.

Thinking about it, there are only two ways an adult snapping turtle could have reached the flower bed where it laid its eggs in (presumably) the early Spring.

From the east river bank, it would have to negotiate a long wheelchair ramp, including a switchback, wedge itself through or under a closed gate, and then make its way tens of yards farther east from the river. I think this is the more plausible explanation.

From the west river bank, it would have needed to make its way up a ten-foot incline, past several sets of stairs, and then crawl the entire length of the Blue Bridge plus a significant distance, before laying its eggs. And all this without being intercepted by humans of good or ill intent.

Either way, that was one determined mama snapping turtle.

So that was my Wednesday. I rescued six baby snapping turtles from being stepped on or run over or from dehydrating on the sidewalk in the mid-day sun. I would call that a good day’s work.

Reading

I am still slowly working my way through Villarreal’s Magic/Realism and Lazzarato’s Capital Hate Everyone. They are both quite good, but also quite dense reads, so the going is slow. In my spare moments, I picked up (and completed) Jen Haeger’s Whispers of a Killer, which I acquired at ConFusion a while back. It was a truly enjoyable read, and I look forward to picking up the next two in the series at the next ConFusion in January.

After finishing Haeger’s book, on a whim I grabbed Tom McGuane‘s short story collection Gallantin Canyon from the shelf. This is the first time I have read McGuane, as far as I remember, and so far I really like it! Thanks to his long friendship with Jim Harrison, I have read a lot about McGuane, but very little by him.

Writing

I didn’t write a lot this week, but I did stop in to the downtown branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library after work to see if my old writing group was still meeting there. It was! It is now called the River City Writer’s Group, and is still going strong. I plan to attend next week, manuscript in hand, for the first time in over twenty years.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Portals, Cyborgs
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Western

Listening

The Turtles, “Happy Together”

Interesting Links

• Recording of the Glasgow 2024 Hugo Award Ceremony
• “The case for idleness Like Oblomov, we must quit our superfluous jobs” (Pratinav Anil, UnHerd)
• “The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street” (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic)
• “Internet Textuality: Toward Interactive Multilinear Narrative“