By Tim Sanders

Spring is certainly here in the Southland. And when Spring arrives, I am reminded of the immortal words of Tennyson, who said: "In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of triple Whoppers with cheese and bacon, fries, onion rings, and cokes." Okay, so actually Tennyson’s poem was about a young man’s fancy turning to thoughts of love, but since the object of his affection in "Locksley Hall" was his first cousin Amy, I thought food might be a workable alternative.

I’d considered writing about the increasing rate of childhood obesity in this country, trying my best to evenly distribute blame amongst fast food restaurants, the electronics industry, parents, the kids themselves, and school systems with too many vending machines and not enough decent physical education programs. I’d considered it, but then I realized that when all was said and done, I would be despised by parents, teachers, burger joint managers, computer nerds, and all of the fine people at Little Debbie’s corporate headquarters. I envisioned crowds of fat, irate children pelting my house with lead sinkers wrapped in Snickers wrappers, and discretion being the better part of valor, I gave up on the idea.

So let me paraphrase Tennyson’s quote another way: "In Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of ... turtles."

Don’t get me wrong, as a youngster I didn’t eat turtles every Spring on a regular basis. I may have been a weird kid, but with the exception of a couple of large snapping turtles my dad and I caught while bass fishing, I seldom ate turtles at all. What I did was, I collected turtles as pets. Spring didn’t come as early in Michigan as it does in Alabama, but when it finally arrived–usually somewhere around the 4th of July–I was ready to get outside and do the kinds of healthy, fat-burning, industrious, productive things kids did back before the advent of satellite TV, home computers, and video games. I flew kites, played catch with friends, pedaled furiously around town on my bicycle, smoked a cigarette or two when I could get away with it, and went turtle hunting.

When Mom got her first automatic washing machine, Dad kept the old wringer washtub. He knew that if he kept it long enough, somebody, somewhere would need it for something. He was right. I needed it to house my turtles. I removed the post from the middle of the thing and plugged the hole in the bottom. My parents objected strongly to the notion of a washtub in the living room, so I put it in the backyard and filled it halfway with water. Then I cut a limb from one of our elm trees and set it in the tub, arranging it with the majority sticking out of the water, giving my turtles something to crawl onto and sun themselves. If you are a fisherman, I’m sure you’ve seen turtles sunning themselves on rocks and logs along the lakeshore. They do that because they are reptiles, and sunshine helps cold-blooded reptiles regulate their body temperature. Once, while crappie fishing on Weiss Lake, I saw a log with three turtles and nine corporate lawyers sunning themselves on it.

But I digress. My friend Charley Harris also collected turtles. I might add, just for your information, that he turned out to be a very stable, normal adult with a fine family and hardly any noticeable personality quirks. Charley and I would go down to the Thornapple River, which flowed through our hometown, and search for small turtles (the big ones wouldn’t fit in our tubs). At any given time we had baby painted turtles, snapping turtles, musk turtles, soft-shelled turtles, and even the occasional Mississippi red-eared terrapin (purchased from a pet store) all swimming together in perfect harmony in our crude turtleariums.

To their credit, pet turtles do not require a lot of attention. As kids we learned that turtles do not like turtle food, but they are fond of raw hamburger, and they absolutely love earthworms. In those days, hamburger meat and earthworms were always available–sometimes at the same place, if you were lucky enough to have a Bob’s Fresh Meat and Bait Emporium nearby. There is considerable entertainment value in watching a tiny painted turtle the size of a quarter trying to eat a live, wriggling, ten-inch nightcrawler. My turtles did learn to do at least one simple trick, which involved lining up, one after the other, on their elm limb to snatch earthworms from my fingers.

On the negative side, little turtles grow into big turtles, and big turtles, like large rocks, tend to get in the way. A turtle cannot fetch your slippers, or catch a frisbee. Frolicking with a pet turtle is like frolicking with Grandpa–very time consuming and frustrating. That is because like Grandpa, a turtle can roll onto his back, but once there, he requires assistance getting back on his feet. As a guard animal, a turtle is practically useless. True, a large snapping turtle might intimidate a burglar, but they do not move very fast on land. Snapping turtles, I mean. Turtles do not show much affection. Since a turtle’s facial expression never really changes, it is almost impossible to determine his frame of mind. He might be deliriously happy, he might be depressed, he might be pondering the meaning of life, and he might be homicidal. You will never know until he decides to take that large piece of flesh from your index finger when you attempt to pet him. If you want to walk your turtle around the block, it can take a week. It will take hours just getting that little leash around his neck. Turtles will not heel on command, and they cannot climb stairs well. If you have an entire flock, or herd, of turtles, you will probably need to turn them loose before Fall, so they can go somewhere and hibernate. Granted, their repertoire consists mainly of swimming, eating, and pooping, so they are not much trouble, but most folks don’t want a restless herd of turtles paddling around in a tub in the parlor all winter long.

Of course, if you have a fat kid–by which I mean an alternatively weighted child–a turtle might be the perfect pet for him. Turtles are fairly low maintenance, they’re every bit as entertaining as MTV, and little Spanky won’t have to wear himself out looking for the turtle remote. And if worse comes to worse, turtle soup is a healthy alternative to Little Debbie snack cakes.