Morning rush hour murders your nerves. Worse for turtles. I saw one the other day, stranded on the center line of a busy expressway. He was upside down, legs fully extended, grasping at the sky. His chances for survival were slim as he wriggled in the morning sun, cars whizzing by. So I pulled over and stopped, waited for a hole in traffic and trotted out to pick him up. As I neared him, I saw the small pool of blood, and the gash in his right rear leg. It might be a fatal wound, but one thing for sure: I would not let him die on that center line. 

Picking him up, I carried him to safety. Walking down into the woods a ways, I built him a nest of grass and leaves, and carefully placed him there, to regain his strength and wits, and perhaps survive his wounds. I left him, trotted up the hill to my car, and zoomed onward to work.

I thought about that turtle all day. He was big, as box turtles go…probably older than me. Maybe he would survive.

I drove home over the same road, and stopped at the spot I had rescued the turtle. I went to his nest, but he was gone. I walked back to the road again, thinking maybe he was okay, when I saw him a few yards away, his hard shell crushed. He had tried to make it across the road again. 

My earlier act of kindness had delivered him to the wrong side.