The Turtle with the Broken Back

In my Bird Songs and Squirrel Tales blog I tell the story of a turtle with a broken shell in the road one morning on the way to work in Cary, North Carolina. I take it to the side of the street, out of the sun, under a bush and some leaves. Then hours later, feel compelled to return to find it and take it to a wildlife hospital, the Piedmont Animal Hospitall, which by then I had researched on the internet. I delivered it, alive. You can read the rest of that story, there. But here I want to focus on this next question.

Why did it matter so much to me, that I researched help for the wounded wildlife animal, and went back to find the turtle and take it to a hospital?

People say, "You did what? For a turtle?"

So why do I care so much about the suffering of other living creatures?

I always cared. We buried baby birds and kittens that died in little metal bandaid containers, wrapped in toilet paper. We tied thread around sticks to make crosses and stuck them in the ground above the burial plot.

We were up in arms when in Saudi Arabia, we heard the gunshots and Mom told us that they were shooting the stray dogs. We children, we outraged. We found several of the dogs from our local pack of wild - but friendly - dogs, dead. We dug holes for them in the dirt, and we buried them. We had ceremonies to grieve and honor their lives. (The story will be in Apricot Tomorrows.)

But after being exposed to Tibetan Buddhism in the 1990s the depth of concern and action increased deeply.

We hear about the starfish story. About people walking along the beach seeing hundreds of starfish on the sand at low tide. The concern is that they will die out of the water. So one person begins throwing them back in, one at a time. While someone else says, "What's the use? There's so many, you can't save them all." And the answer is, "For the ones that get thrown back in, it is everything, they get to live." (More or less the story.)

It was Seven Years in Tibet, the movie I went to see just before I requested novice ordination in a Tibetan Buddhist lineage in Maryland. They mentioned that while building a movie theater in one of the Tibetan cities, the builders had to be careful about the worms, about not hurting them, and about relocating them.

It is a little puzzling to me now, as I know the Tibetans eat meat. So how is eating meat consistent with being concerned about worms? I can't answer everything. But it did have an impact. I began looking at the smallest life as being worth protecting.

We also were taught that every living creature is on its path, and that its life is precious to it. That really sunk in, deep. The way it can be with children, before they are taught to become jaded.

So I pick up worms - sometimes after a rainstorm there are so many. Maybe they drown even on the sidewalks. And if not, when the sun comes out, many don't live. But if I see one living on a sidewalk, I usually bend down and pick it up to send it over to a grassy area. If it's a creature, insect or reptile, that I'm not comfortable picking up I may use a stick or something to move it out of human traffic - foot traffic, or bicycles.

My friends laugh at me. Maybe in a nice way, maybe thinking I'm off the wall. But I feel the preciousness of life, the preciousness and suffering of being alive. And the teachings do talk about what we do coming back to us. Kind of like the Christian teaching of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Karma. Saving a small life, not just benefiting the little creature, but maybe also benefiting my own life, or the life of others. The kindness spreading. Who knows really?

But definitely, I feel more connected, more compassionate, more committed by these small acts of acknowledging and protecting life. How bad can that be.