One afternoon, I was sitting on my living room couch watching television. From there, I could see my patio through the glass doors. While watching TV, I turned to look at my yard when I noticed my neighbor Thomas on the upper level of my backyard. He was moving around, looking near the trees and under some bushes. Curious, I went outside to my patio. Thomas looked up when he saw me. We greeted each other briefly, then he returned to searching around the trees and under the bushes, pushing them back as if he had lost something. I was puzzled by his behavior. I wanted to know what he was looking for in my yard.
Now, Thomas owns two beautiful dogs. One of them is young and very energetic. Given that both of his dogs are large enough for him to see, I didn't believe he was playing hide and seek with them. So that wasn't the case. I didn't say anything, but I began staring at him for obvious reasons.
When Thomas saw that I was still looking at him, he knew that the vacant look on my face deserved an explanation. He stopped searching and looked at me again, "I'm, I'm looking for my neighbor's schildkroete."
Although I remained quiet, my face shouted, "WHAAT?" From the expression on my face, Thomas knew I needed a bit more information. So, he tried to explain to me that his neighbor's schildkroete was missing. He talked to me like I knew what a schildkroete was. I didn't.
He added more information that didn't satisfy my inquisitive mind. He also told me that the sschildkroet was kept in their backyard pond by the neighbor of the house next to his, but it had gotten out that day. I felt uneasy because some creature I wasn't familiar with was freely roaming around the neighborhood without supervision. Yet, all the additional information Thomas was giving me provided me with no clues as to what he was talking about.
Still trying to help me understand, Thomas pronounced the word for me of the thing he was looking for, "schildkroete." He waited as I tried to repeat it, but all I could say was an awkward-sounding "Sholdskachrate," which completely destroyed his native German language. I felt terrible, but this is precisely the reason why I hesitate to speak German in public places to avoid embarrassment like this.
So, I contorted my face with childlike curiosity. Thomas, who was very patient, tried his best again to explain to me what a schildkroete was by using hand gestures. I gathered from Thomas' mime audition that this 'thing' was an oval-shaped creature about the size of a football or maybe bigger. That's when I began to worry.
Suddenly, Thomas stopped for a few seconds and looked off into the distance away from me. Sometimes, I will do the same thing: stare into space, trying to think of a word that escapes me. And like me, Thomas hoped that the English word would magically pop out of the sky into his brain, but it didn't. He seemed frustrated as he struggled to come up with the English word for schildkroete.
Thomas was visibly frustrated, and to my dismay, he added more information, hoping his charade description of the schildkroete would clear up my confusion. It didn't. Speaking of the game of Charades, I was never good at it, so that was my handicap.
In all honesty, I found this situation incredibly funny. But I was still too confused to laugh about it. To summarize what Thomas had told me so far: A neighbor who lives two houses from me had a 'thing' with a name I could not pronounce. This 'thing' had escaped from the neighbor's pond. This creature was neither a dog nor a cat, but it lives in water, could walk on land, and was on the run like a fugitive who had just broken out of prison. I feared the worst: I might have a heart attack if I met this creature by accident!
Thomas was disappointed that I couldn't understand him, so he pronounced the word again, but a little slower, so I could get used to how it sounded. Thomas enunciated, "Schild...kroete, Schild...kroete." Unfortunately, repeating the word didn't help me, at least not yet. The strain of attempting to understand what the hell this "Schildkroete" proved to be too much pressure for my poor brain to bear. I felt like an idiot!
I tried to pronounce the word several times. I was embarrassed because I couldn't grasp it yet. Thankfully, Thomas is a patient soul. He nodded his head to encourage my pronunciation, though incorrect, of this new foreign word describing a creature I had never seen before.
But Thomas realized I was in a mental fog. He knew I still had a lot of questions about this animal. So, he made another attempt to describe it to me while demonstrating its shape with his hands. He repeated that the schildkröte swims in water and can walk on land. Holy Scheisse (shit)! I was close to freaking out because I imagined this schildkroete as some ugly alien amphibian lost in my neighborhood.
As I processed all the information Thomas had given me so far, a picture gradually appeared in my head. I shouted, "TURTLE! TURTLE! Is that it? Is it a TURTLE?" I sounded like a mad scientist who had just discovered a cure for a dreaded disease in his lab.
Thomas yelled, "Yes, that's it! It's a turtle!!" I was tickled because he sounded like he had just won the lottery. At that point, my brain felt relieved but overworked like I had just passed an advanced German language test. Whew!
Finally relieved, Thomas smiled and told me that he and his neighbor had spent the entire day looking for the turtle/schildkroete. I thought this fact was hilarious and even more unbelievable.
First of all, I wondered just how agile that turtle could be if two grown men had been looking for the damn thing all day! I know turtles can't move that fast over land. They don't make any noise. They crawl slowly and creep quietly. But, the very thought of a turtle roaming around the neighborhood by itself (or worse) getting into my house through my patio door, which I keep open to allow a cool breeze to flow through, was terrifying to me.
I thought, "What if this schildkroete were to sneak into my living room while I was sitting alone at my table, writing and deep in thought? All hell would break loose!"
Knowing me, I'd probably turn my table upside down and knock my television over. Then I'd overturn my couch and do even more damage to my living room! It was scary thinking about all the destruction that turtle could cause!
EPILOGUE:
Two days after the turtle's brazen escape, I was on my porch when I saw Thomas drive up and park his car in front of his house. After he got out of his car, we greeted each other and talked a bit, as we usually do. Naturally, I asked him about the missing turtle. Smiling, Thomas told me that another neighbor had found it. Thank Goodness!
Apparently, the man who lives across the street from me noticed it right outside in front of my house while I was away.
I said to Thomas, "So the turtle was in front of MY house???" Thomas laughed at my reaction because he could sense my unnecessary fear of the Schildkroete. Still laughing, he waved my needless concern away and went inside to get his dogs to take them for a walk.
Considering certain creatures hanging around me, I wondered if I had some strange connection with animals in a former life. Since I moved here years ago, the neighborhood stray cat has visited me often! I'm a dog person, not a cat person. So I always gently shooed the cat away, but it always came back. Why and for what? I don't know. Silly cat!
Now, back to the turtle or schildkroete! I still cannot figure out how the turtle got from the pond in my neighbor's backyard to the front of my house. My neighbor's yard is downhill and two houses away from mine. What were the turtle's intentions? Why couldn't it roll down the hill to someone else's house at the end of the street? What attracted it to come in front of MY house? Guess I'll never know because schildkroeten (turtles) can't talk.
I thought about what would have happened if I had encountered that schildkroete at night before they found it? What if that shadowy thing had silently crawled through my patio door without my knowledge? Lord, I can see the headlines now:
Reporter, "How did she die exactly?"
The Coroner declared, "It was a harmless turtle! Can you believe that?"