There is much food for reflection in this story on the sand. What we call human nature is very largely the nature of all animal life, and community of interest governs all association. When it ceases to exist, the quadruped or biped invariably seeks isolation. Selfishness is soul solitude.
In the case of the turtles the highly civilized divorce courts were not necessary. They simply quit.
The record of the little romance was written upon a frail page, which the next wind or shower obliterated as completely as time effaces most of the stories of human lives.
The turtles are persistent wanderers. Their trails are found all through the dune country, and usually a definite objective seems to be indicated. A trail will begin at the margin of a small pond back of the hills, and follow practically a direct route for a long distance to another pond, often over a mile away. Sometimes high eminences intervene, which are patiently climbed over without material alteration in the course which the mysterious compass under the brown shell has laid before it.
The deserted habitat may have been invaded by unwelcome new arrivals and rendered socially unattractive. Domestic complications may have inspired the pilgrimage, the voyager may have decided that he was unappreciated in the community in which he lived, or he may have been excommunicated for unbelief in established turtle dogmas.
The common variegated pond turtle, which is the variety most often found among the dunes, is a beautiful harmless creature, but his wicked cousin, the snapping turtle, is an ugly customer. He leads a life of debased villainy, and no justification for his existence has yet been discovered. He is a rank outlaw, and the enemy of everything within his radius of destruction. His crimes are legion, and like the sand-burr, he seems to be one of nature’s inadvertencies. The mother ducks, the frog folk, and all the small life in the sloughs dread his sinister bulk and relentless jaws.
He is a voracious brute, and feeds upon all kinds of animal fare. He often attains a weight of about forty pounds, and the rough moss covered shell of a full grown specimen is sometimes fourteen inches long. One of the peculiarities of this repulsive wretch is that he strikes at his victims much in the same manner as a rattlesnake, and with lightning-like rapidity.
Possibly he was sent into the world to assist in enabling us to accentuate our blessings by contrast—as some people we occasionally meet undoubtedly were—and it is best to let him absolutely alone. He is an evil and unclean thing and we will pass him by. Like the skunk, he does not invite companionship, and has no social charms whatever.
It was not he who helped to play the little comedy on the sand.
