Another turtle

I was doing dishes yesterday, when I looked out the kitchen window and saw this massive turtle crawling across the front yard. Mom and I went out to inspect and we both came to the conclusion that this was the ugliest turtle we had ever seen. Not that it mattered, because his size and the "I'll bite your hand off if you get near me" look on his face instantly made him cool. I went and got my camera to take some pictures and he put his head as low to the ground as he could, as if to say, "The lower I get, the less you can see me." He never full on retracted into his shell though, which suggests to me that either: (a)he's a bad ass and isn't afraid of anything, or (b)he's too old to give a !@#$, i.e. "Great. More people staring at me. Again."

While taking pictures I discovered something very odd about this turtle that made him look a little bit diabolical. His eyelids were white! First of all, I never thought of turtles blinking before. Second, shouldn't the lids match his face? I don't know the scientific reasoning behind this but it is an oddity indeed. Quite frankly, it made him look possessed.

Grumpy old turtle.

Half blink. Weird, I know. I guess he was keeping an eye on me. Ha. Haha.

Possessed turtle.

I took this from inside the house, hence his bravery at sticking his head way out, which by the way, his head was effing huge! It reminding me of Jabba the Hut.

When I first saw him, he was full on moving across the front yard. After he came in contact with people and we went back inside, he proceeded to sit there and wait. And wait. And wait some more. I guess he was making sure we weren't coming back to bother him? So then he'd move two feet, and wait again. He ended up crawling into our front garden where he spent the rest of the day. We went back outside with Babe later in the afternoon and she'd want to get close to sniff it but we had to keep shouting, "No!" because the curmudgeonly turtle was totally giving her this, "Closer...come a little closer, that's it, look into my eyes, just a little bit closer..." look. I think he wanted to inhale her whole or something. He probably could have done it, too.

I couldn't find him this morning. Hopefully he went on his slow merry way. Although, I have this sense of foreboding that he's probably still in the garden waiting silently to strike.