Another holiday is upon us, which should be an easy one to celebrate because, you know, we’ve all been there. Today is Laugh At What You Were Proud Of In Your Youth, the day when we all look back on our accomplishments or finds of the past and say to ourselves, “You naïve, ignorant fool!” In the case that I’m showcasing here, Younger Me was, um, just four days younger, when I posted about a pic of the pond edge that showed up to twenty turtles basking. What a maroon! This is what we were seeing this morning:
Just to blow the previous record out of the water (heh!) there are forty-four turtles in this image. Don’t believe me? Like before, clicking on the image above will take you to a full-resolution version so you can see for yourself, and if that isn’t enough, this link takes you to an annotated one: green for confirmed turtle heads, orange where only their backs were visible, and blue for those in the water. And in case you think I was fudging things a little to drive the count up, these were all confirmed by comparisons to other images – there are no cypress roots being mistaken for turtles in there.
Don’t miss the nutria bebbehs in there either, eating together alongside the favored taller cypress knee that we now call the Matterhorn, again, simply to have an easy reference when we’re spotting all the wildlife with binoculars.
There is something sobering about such a large cadré of, it must be noted, armored residents massing on our shores, and while we can’t imagine what possessions of ours they could possibly want, The Girlfriend and I are gathering a collection of empty turtle shells in case of a charge, to tiddly-wink them back into the water as needed*. It’s not like we have to be ever-vigilant – if we see the invasion beginning, we could probably still finish lunch…**
* I suspect a lot of people won’t get that reference
** That’s just being Testudinist…