So we found this tiny turtle, collapsed just inside the shadow at the edge of a sidewalk. Head partway out, one leg outflung, as if it had been midstep and then collapsed. I crouched down and gingerly poked the shell. Truth: I expected a very dead turtle. Even cold, the local lizards won’t let you touch them.

It twitched.

The photo session: a very tiny turtle in Nous’ hands

Of course I picked it up. (I am the person who picked up a cold frog off the street on a predawn walk the day of high school graduation, came home, and had it revive in my pocket and leap out on the breakfast table.) The turtle was far more civilized (reptiles, amirite?) and pulled all limbs into its shell, probably hoping we’d go away.

We did not. The turtle was a good 100 yards from the nearest pond (this park has two), across two sidewalks, a big-ass lawn, and through a coyote-inhabited thicket. How it got where it was is a mystery (hatched up there? Teleportation circle under the honeysuckle?), but I didn’t think it’d survive its trip to the water if it was already cold and exhausted at before it even crossed the first sidewalk.

The ponds have a concrete rim which, in drought years (and it is rarely not a drought year) sit about 6 inches above the water in which one can see tiny fish swirling through the muck. The rocks and logs that stick out of the pond are lined with turtles, and they were all giving us side-eye. I put Tiny T down and waited. Five minutes to a) warm up and b) decide that we were far enough away, and it poked all appendages out and made a clumsy scramble of a few inches. Then it sat and looked, like it’d never seen water before. Like, omg! Am I supposed to jump in there? I am.

In transit to the pond

Tiny T scrabbled to the edge, pitched in… and took what looked like its first swim (awkward and flaily, before suddenly becoming smooth and controlled). Then it headed straight for a cluster of rocks and dove, trailing bubbles, and crawled into a crack.

There are many things in that pond that can kill a baby turtle–bigger turtles, bullfrogs, assorted birds–but they’re gonna have to work a little harder for it.

OK, so no lie: this post has been sitting here a week while I try and craft some elaborate and clever metaphor between this tiny turtle, luck, and a very thinly veiled memoir about publishing. I give up. Let me just say that making it to the pond is hard, yes, but it’s only the beginning. No guarantees. Bullfrogs abound! (Title of my next book. JOKE.)