Henry the Turtle

 Remember the 1950’s Disney film Old Yeller?  Setting: 1860’s Texas farm country. Storyline: Dog finds boy.  Boy exhibits coming of age angst, but with time ‘boy finds dog’.  Dog saves boy from wolf.  Dog subsequently contracts ‘hydrophobie’ (which one would assume is a fear of water… but is apparently some form Disney rabies on steroids).  Boy’s mother grabs gun to ‘put Yeller down’ but Boy seeks closure and manhood by shooting Man’s Best Friend himself.  (All things considered a healthy introduction to adulthood for the young lad.) 

 

Which brings us to Henry the Turtle…  Henry is/was a turtle roughly the size of a half-dollar that Jack and Erin discovered underneath the car last night.  Jack promptly named him Henry (with a pronunciation that resembles the Herman's Hermits’ version in Henry VIII: “Hen – Ery”) and started talking to him in a voice not unlike that of Bill Murray’s in Caddyshack.  Erin and I heard a lot of “Aw, ith a cute wittle turtle” and “Aw, Henry’s my favowit… my best friend.” 

 

Naturally, we did what any overindulgent parents would do – we went to Pet Co to buy Henry a home.  Norman, the resident reptilian expert, helped us sort through our options with young Henry.  Norman noted that Henry is a slider something or other and requires a special (and by special I mean expensive) lighting system in his rather elaborate (also expensive) aquarium.  Without the aforementioned environment Henry would develop a "devastating" condition known as softshell, and he would go to turtle heaven. 

 

It became very clear to Erin and me that Henry would miss the wild and his mommy terribly; and we must ‘think green’ and release him to his natural habitat to find his turtle family.  We bought a fish and tank to take the edge off the upcoming ‘old yeller moment’ (sans firearms), but Jack didn’t seem overly interested in anything but Henry the Turtle.

 

The release was largely anticlimactic – and as such it was really funny.  We have a ravine (by Lowcountry standards – 5 ft elevation change) across the street from our house where there’s a tidal creek with brackish water.  We stood over the edge and were moments into our heartfelt good-buys when Jack underhand launches Henry into the woods below. 

 

At this point I just want to know where he saw Old Yeller. Old Yeller.