Living in the country as we did, I only had one friend that lived close by, and he was a mile away. Our parents wouldn't let us get together over once a week, probably thought we would get into too much trouble if we congregated any more often than that. There was probably some logic there.
One afternoon we were playing in the extreme back of the farm, near our little creek. Suddenly we saw a large turtle crawling back towards the water. This was the biggest turtle we had ever seen, at least two feet across its shell. Soon visions of turtle meat flashed through our heads. We wanted to catch it and bring it home, but we were afraid it would bite us. We were often told when a turtle bites you it won't let go until sundown, even if you cut off its head, so we didn't want to pick it up. We both were still pretty small and I'm not sure we could have carried it anyway.
The only way we could figure out how to get it back to the distant barnyard was to stick a tree limb in its mouth and drag it home. This became quite an ordeal, the turtle would grab the limb and then let go after only going a few yards. Spending most of the afternoon, and only stopping at the blackberry bush for a snack, we finally accomplished our mission.
It was a struggle to lift him into a large fifty-five-gallon barrel we used to cool milk. We were amazed by the fact he was almost as big around as the barrel. The milk would have to find another home.
Running up to tell mom, she said she would fry it for us, but we should leave him in the barrel for about a month so the mud would clear out of his veins, that would make him taste better. It would be a long month, we had to check on him daily to make sure he was doing OK, we didn't want to miss that turtle dinner.
Finally, the big day arrived, Bill and I watched in anticipation as my dad attempted to deshell him and clean the meat to make it ready for frying. Someone had told us the meat would flop around in the skillet when the turtle was fried. Sure enough it did, some of the meat almost flopped out of the skillet.
We probably should have made soup out of him, the meat was actually tough and not very good. Oh well, it was fun and we learned something.
Gary has been a writer/photographer for over 20 years, specializing in nature, landscapes and studying native cultures.
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