I visited my grandma yesterday, and she told me two stories I had never heard before. They were both about turtles.
My grandma is from the South. She is beautiful, spunky, adorable and awesome. And her eyes light up in a twinkle just like my dad's eyes did when a good story was being told. One thing I learned about the South yesterday is that when it rains hard, turtles come out of everywhere and cover the roads. If you are driving, you can't help but hear the turtles going "POP POP POP POP POP" as you drive over them.
On one visit back to visit her parents, grandma and grandpa were driving during a storm and suddenly the road was covered in turtles. Grandpa got out of the car and was able to catch two turtles. He brought them into the car and decided he should take one of them back home with him to surprise the kids. When they got on the airplane to return to Utah, Grandpa stuck on of the turtles inside his camera case. He put the camera case under his seat
A little later in the flight, the lady sitting in front of him kept getting out of her seat to complain to the stewardess about something. Grandpa and Grandma didn't really know what she was upset about, but they could tell something was wrong. After several talks with the stewardess, this woman was given a different seat. Grandpa decided soon after she left that he should check on his turtle. He got the camera bag out from under the empty seat in front of him and opened it up.
PEEEEEEEE-YEEEEEEEEWWWWWW. It was the worst smell ever. He closed the bag up and stuck it back under the seat, realizing that his turtle had been the source of the fellow passenger's discomfort. I can just see the smile on his face as this dawned on him.
On another trip to the south, this time with the kids in the station wagon, the Breinholt family stopped at the Mississippi River for some fun. The kids were amazed at how many turtles they found, and they loaded up two buckets of turtles and took them in the car. Each night after the family slept at a motel, it was quite a job to find all the turtles that had crawled around and hidden in the car.
Two of those turtles survived the trip back to Salt Lake City, one of which was missing most of one leg. Grandpa helped the kids make a sand box for the turtles to live in out by the garden shed. But that gimpy turtle kept wandering away, which was upsetting to the kids. My grandpa was a problem solver, though. He got out his drill and put a hole in that 3-legged turtle's shell. The hole was just big enough to put a thin rope through, and the rope was tied up to the laundry line. This way the turtle was free to roam but not to escape.
That worked for a while, but eventually both turtles did escape.
About a year later, the boys were running around at the fish hatchery behind the Breinholt home, and they came across a three-legged turtle with a hole drilled in its shell! Of course they brought it home again.
