Missing Turtle located – Film at 11!

This afternoon my friend and fellow pumpkin waterer, Joanne, and I decided to go for a quick walk up the Trans Canada Trail behind our house. Let it be known that the trail is well marked and well taken care of and a good walk from our place up to a road that will take you into Burnaby Heights. While we were walking on the path, we saw this sign taped to a bench:

I took a picture of this sign so we didn’t have to worry about remembering the phone number in the event we found one of the missing turtles. We chit chatted and came to a street that lead down toward the water. Tempted to see if we could get to a beach AND find a short cut home, I asked Joanne if she wanted to head down the road and then try to find another path back home. Feeling adventurous, she agreed and we walked down Penzance Street, past a gigantic Chevron refinery and then to a dead end street. We could see a path, though, so we headed into the woods.

Cautionary note: PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! THIS WAS A VERY BAD DECISION!

Soon the path we had been walking on that once looked like this:

Turned into this:

Oh crap. We did find some areas that looked like they had been bushwhacked some time ago and what looked like bike tire tracks on the ground, so we followed that grown-over path? walkway? overgrown nightmare? until we came across a secret BMX biking area. There were huge mounds of dirt all around, wooden ramps, great big buckets, some helmets, and a hammock hanging up. Who built this big biking area in the middle of the woods? Here’s what that looked like:

Feeling like we must be closer to home by this time, we started following another overgrown path and Joanne spotted this guy:

I have no idea how she noticed the turtle – he was half under a log. So, referring to my camera, I told her the number as she called on her cell phone to let them know we had found one of their turtles. The person who answered the phone told us she’d meet us two blocks away from our house in 10 minutes, but Joanne explained that 1) we didn’t know where we were 2) we were kind of lost and 3) we had no idea how long it would take us to get home. I picked up the turtle and we trudged on…and on…and then we found a fence and followed the fence allllllll…….the way up – at a 90 degree angle, no, make that 110 degree angle – to a kind of flat spot up top. I was DYING at this point, and honestly, quite panicked. Even though I knew we were just in the woods behind our own house, I thought we were going to have to call someone for help. Like a rescue! Or call Mike at work and tell him I was lost behind the house someplace. That would go over well.

Since I’m ALWAYS at the back, no matter what, Joanne was ahead of me, in her flip flops – not really prepared for this hiking excursion – making her way up the rocky hill. I actually groaned out loud when I looked up to see how much further we had to go to get to who knows where at this point. I was hoping we’d end up in someone’s back yard…hoping to hear a car or people yelling, but we didn’t hear anything. I grabbed the fence with one hand and the turtle in the other, who had stopped being squirmy, but would just kick his feet out now and then. We hiked and hiked and FINALLY, about 20 minutes later (but it seemed like 3 hours) we met up with the original path about 10 minutes away from our place.

We told everyone that walked by us that we were lost and that we had found a turtle. Stupid turtle, I thought. He’s nearly dinner plate size and I ended up carrying him with my hand up the way a waiter carries a platter through the restaurant. Once we got home, Joanne called the people again and told them to come to us – we were waiting for them on the front lawn. I put the turtle down and took her portrait.

Joanne had a genius idea to turn on the sprinkler and she really liked that:

We waited for the owners to find us as I caught my breath and drank some water. I kind of warmed up to the turtle seeing his head all stretched out like that enjoying the water. He was kind of cute.

A small car drove up just then and two teenagers and a mom hopped out and were really happy to see their turtle, Paprika, doing okay. It turns out they live in the neighbourhood and their house backs onto the trail. They have two big ponds in their backyard and they had taken 3 turtles from a local reptile rescue home to live in their beautiful ponds out back. They busted out and went for an adventure and so far Paprika is the first one found. And she was quite a ways from home – she really put on the turtle miles. They’re going to set up something now in their yard so the adventurous turtles won’t book it for the inlet again. Who knew turtles would take off like that?

Since we’re all okay now and Paprika’s home in the nice pond, I have officially learned not to go against that intuition I so often ignore. I realized it’s the same feeling I get just before I pick a movie that turns out to be awful, just like I did last week with that crap Crispin Glover movie, Simon Says. The next time I get that urge for follow those temptations, I’m going to make a conscious effort NOT to follow it.

And another thing, I think I’ll add “Turtle Portraits” to my repertoire for my Action Pets Photography company. I’m sure it will be a big seller.

UPDATE: Paprika’s mom (also named Joanne) came back tonight and dropped off some fresh baked banana bread for us! YUM! Thanks Paprika’s mom!