If it woulda been a snake, it woulda bit me

Melissa has an inspiring story about a turtle.........Faith has a super crazy story about birds getting into her van. Well, yesterday God decided to merge the two of those stories in my life, with a super crazy story about a large turtle and my van. Hold onto your seats, folks. It's gonna be a crazy ride....and a pretty gross one.

I was driving home from taking Brooke to preschool yesterday with visions of shopping at Kohl's in my head. I was behind a Dualie (sp?) pulling a big lawn mower trailer; thus, that was the only thing I could really see in front of me. So, I was about a mile away from my house when all of the sudden, I hear a loud thud and scratching noise and the old van started bogging down. I thought, "What in the world did I run over?" I then noticed there were two men standing on the side of the road. In very broken English, one started running toward me saying, "YOU KILLED THE TURTLE! YOU KILLED THE TURTLE!!!!!!!!"

Now, I just love turtles, always have. I looked under my van, and stuck under it was a HUGE turtle! And I mean huge, it was probably 20x20. I don't know of a lake close to there, but that big old thing had to have come from somewhere. When I looked behind my van, I saw a trail of blood. :( I felt horrible....I didn't see the poor thing b/c the Dualie/trailer had cleared it and that blocked my view of it until I was already on it. Well, another man stopped and they all tried to help me get my van off of the turtle, but to no avail. It was just too big. Fortunately for me (kidding on that one), they both had to leave. As we were standing there a Policeman drove by and I tried to wave him down, but he just kept right on going. So, I decided to call Animal Control to help me, because I figured, "Hey, it's an animal."

Wrong! The Animal Control officer on the phone told me they'd never had that happen before (and surprisingly, neither had I) and put me on hold to talk to his Supervisor. After a minute, he came back on to say they couldn't help me but he would transfer me to 911 dispatch for the Police Dept. So, the police department was really nice to talk to, but after talking to their supervisor, they decided they couldn't help me either. So, since it was thankfully within city limits, he decided to transfer me to the City Fire Department (go figure!). Praise the Lord and Hallelujah! The Fire Department said they would send a truck out to help me. So, in about five minutes, the fire truck pulls up and blocks the right lane with their truck, jacks my van up, and puts a pole under there to move the turtle out. That feisty little thing snapped at that pole and held on for dear life - the fireman was able to drag it across the street just by it being clamped down on the pole. It was missing about 1/3 of its top shell, so I'm praying it will survive.

I am now forever indebted to the Charlotte Fire Department.

One of the firemen jokingly said I needed to ask my husband to buy me some big "26 inch rims" to put on the van so it wouldn't happen again. Couldn't you see that?

Luckily, I had no major damage to the van.....the turtle had gotten stuck under the frame and just bent it a little. As you look at the picture above, you can see shell fragments and blood spatter on the bottom of my van, along with bent metal. 'Cause I know you wanted to see that.