kamikaze turtles

Today will be spent doing house work and mowing and cleaning and laundry...but yesterday, we took one of Asherel's friends and headed off to the river to kayak. While the girls docked and swam at the wonderful sandbar in the river, I tooled around the shore line, stalking a heron. Turtles were out in droves. I found it curious that the turtles would often climb to the highest spot on a log sticking up out of the water. As I glided near, they would then take a kamikaze leap into the water. For that brief second, the turtles were flying.

I wonder if the turtle found it a thrill to be airborne. Or was it terrifying to be doing something it was clearly not intended to do? It was impossible to tell whether the turtle enjoyed the precipitous plunge, but as i would slip by the series of logs, there would be a symphony of kerplunks as the flying turtles smacked back into the water.
I would guess they did not consider the consequences of their heroic leap. They perceived me as a threat, not wanting to take the time to ascertain whether I was indeed an animal lover. They must have, on some level, determined that they could not take the time to crawl back down the log. Their survival depended on the courage to make that leap. In a split second, they assessed the odds and in a sense, took a leap of faith. They didn't know if they could fly, but I suspect they knew it was unlikely. What they did know is that their salvation lay in the swirling waters they could not reach without doing something the turtle was never meant to do. It was a leap of faith, but it made all the sense in the world to do it.

2 Chronicles 20:20 (NIV)
....Have faith in the Lord your God and you will be upheld.....



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