I pulled us out of one driveway and into another. My friends and I had said our goodbyes to Elisa’s mom and piled into my car with beer on our minds. The Stone Brewery was a good forty minutes away and we were amped to be moving toward what promised to be a rewarding beer-centered experience.
Still, even with the crossfire of excited chatter flying around me, I was the driver and I knew I had to focus. My mother always told me to drive defensively. She would tell me to scan from left to right, to ensure that no feeble granny, darting child, or stray dog would ruin my day. Climbing up Elisa’s steep hill, my eyes moved from left to right. And so it was that within the first minute of our journey I uttered an “oh. my. god.” and immediately steered us into the closest driveway.
If it had been a rare bearded monkey or a Black Mamba I wouldn’t have seen it. They would have been moving too fast and we would have continued on our merry way. But it wasn’t a rare bearded monkey or Black Mamba at my 2 o’clock line of vision, just strolling down the sidewalk. It was a giant tortoise.
Now, in my mother’s list of examples of obstacles and potential death traps she never mentioned giant tortoises (but then again he was on the sidewalk). Weighing more than I cared to know, with a shell the size of a large umbrella, where had this primordial beast come from? What did he want from the citizens of Del Cerro and why had he chosen this moment of all moments to emerge from wherever he was supposed to reside? Where was he supposed to reside? We had no clue. We proceeded, as all monkeys do, to procure our cameras and snap feverishly in the tortoise’s face. For if there was ever a striking suburban moment, this was one.
He was slow but fast enough to where you felt uncomfortable when he came at you. He veered into a nearby house’s yard and proceeded to chow down on some grass. A second before I was trying to protect him and tell my friends to stop messing with him but, unless his default “fight or flight” mode was to eat, he seemed okay with the fact that he was clearly lost and strange creatures were following him.
Elisa had called her mom and told her to come as soon as possible. She power walked up the street, worried. Was there an emergency? Was someone hurt? She was pacified after her initial surprise at seeing our new friend and once she had had enough time to collect her thoughts she continued up the hill to knock on one door after another with her simple inquiry: “Excuse me, have you by any chance misplaced a giant tortoise?” When she returned with no success we decided to (A) knock on the door of the house where the tortoise and we were loitering and (B) call Animal Control to see if they could come by and check out the situation.
I heard my friend’s polite explanation that “hello, sorry to disturb you sir but there is a giant turtle on your front lawn” and realized how crazy this must sound to someone what has yet to see the turtle. I started to get afraid that they would curse at him and threaten us with some sort of heavy object. But the guys who lived there were curious and trusting enough to step off their doorstep and onto their footpath to see if we were just a bunch of disrespectful teenagers or if there was indeed a gigantic reptile grazing on their lawn.
The two big black guys, tattoos intact, broke into big smiles of disbelief when they saw that we were telling the truth. Then a boy and a little girl came out to see what all the commotion was about. Pretty soon all ten of us were just standing there, cracking jokes, checking back every so often to make sure the tortoise was still there, indulging in the ludicrousness of the situation. Bizarre, absurd, uncanny—however you want to call it, it served as a powerful reminder that when people are called out of their homes to unite around something all humans would find notable, friendly exchanges can be made. It shook us all out of the everyday and into extraordinary. It broke down barriers and reminded me that in every anonymous, cold-faced house there is a combination of living, breathing, feeling human beings inside. There might even be some big turtles.
An hour after we got to the brewery Elisa’s mom texted her that a neighbor further up the road had claimed the tortoise. Nevertheless, I still wanted to believe that there was a reason that turtle escaped when he did and that we saw him, reminding me that my denunciation of things like “fate” and “destiny” aren’t as firmly fixed as I make them out to be.
