Moving Bubba's Mobile Home

It was one of those nights you read about at the beginning of mystery novels. It was dark! There was no moon. There were clouds in the sky thick enough to prevent even starlight from coming through. The only thing visible was the cone in front of me that was illuminated by my headlights. Outside that cone of light was the world of boogey men and unseen things that go bump in the night that cause children to hide under their blankies.

As I drove home I was pretty much on auto-pilot. In the instant, if I had been asked, I could not have told you exactly where I was. I knew the road I was on, but not exactly where on that road. I did not need to know really until I got to the intersection some 15 miles further down the road. Until then it was just a matter of managing to stay between the centerline and the white line at the edge of the road.

When I say that it appeared out of nowhere, it was exactly that, it appeared out of nowhere. My first inclination was to ask what would a football be doing in the middle of the road until, in the next instant, I realized it was moving. In a credit to the engineer that designed General Motor's anti-lock breaking system, that I was able to hit the brake, slow my SUV and manuever all at the same time. In middle age, it was no easy task for all of my nuerons to fire at the same time and allow me to accomplish all of this simultaneously as well. I was able too split the uprights with the moving football between my tires, front and back.

My SUV came to rest about 100 feet past the football. I probably should have kept going, but something said, go back, help. I pulled my truck over between the road and a guardrail, got a flashlight out of the back and walked back down the road, carefully looking down the roadway for approaching headlights. The road was as straight as it was black, so I knew I would see any cars coming for several miles.

As I approached, the slowly moving football became more recognizeable as a turtle, or more accurately a tortoise. He was about 12 inches across and had a dark, greenish brown color to him. He had an interesting pattern on his back that did actually resemble a football of sorts. He was slowly, as tortoises tend to do, making his way across the road; probably in an effort to show a possum that it could actually be done. When my flashlight lit him up he stopped and pulled everything into his shell, or as I was told as a child, his "home." I smiled as I thought that since he was on a roadway it must be a mobile home, and Jeff Foxworthy-style redneck jokes crept into my thinking. A redneck turtle with a mobile home? I immediately decided to name him Bubba.

I walked up to Bubba and got behind him. His nose would have been on the centerline had he not been all tucked inside his shell and he had at least another 15 feet to get to the other side of the road. I grabbed his shell on either side and hefted him to about waist height. I then walked him over to the side of the road to which he was headed and placed him on the other side of the guard rail. My first thought was whether he would, for whatever reason, turn around and go back to the side of the road from which he had come. A dumb redneck thing to do. My second thought was whether I had committed a federal felony by "molesting" some endangered species. It would be just like some government bureaucrat to charge me for preventing the beast from being killed on the highway. I could see him arguing the need for this turtle to be allowed to be killed in some Darwinian "circle of life" logic. In my head, I argued that cars should not figure in the circle of life.

As I watched, the tortoise popped his head slowly out of his shell and, after making sure the coast was clear, continued in the same direction he was going, away from the road. I have to admit, I was hoping for him to stop and look back, like in all the fairy tales and fables, but he just kind of plodded into the thick grass, my satisfaction with having done a good thing having to come from within.

I went back to my truck and wondered if he would have made it on his own as I walked back. I wondered if a policeman would have stopped and given me a ticket for creating a hazard, first by stopping so abruptly and second by pulling off the roadway on such a dark night. Finally, I just thought that it made no difference because I was alone and if I had committed a crime or series of crimes, it had been perfect. There were no skid marks, no witnesses, no damage. I would never be caught.

I continued my drive home, a little satisfied at having done something good and a little more careful and wondering, who's gonna come up with a law to require turtles to have lights on them?