Chapter Eleven: Week 2 Story of the Two Turtles

 

The Story of two turtles

 

There once were two turtles who lived by a pond. The pond was like a dream, nice and cool with lots to eat! One day as the two turtles were out for a swim they noticed a fox making its way towards the pond. The first turtle said to the other “Be quiet and still, we don’t want to fox to know we’re here.” The other turtle replied loudly, “why don’t we want the fox to know we’re here?” Of course, the fox was not deaf, so he could hear what the second turtle had said. “Well, well, well, what do we have here? A couple of turtles! You would make a mighty fine feast!”, said the fox. This, of course, made the turtles very scared. They did not want to be a feast, they wanted to remain alive! “Follow my lead.”, said the first turtle to the second. “Okay.”, said the second to the first. The first turtle went on to try and persuade the fox that they were not turtles that would make a good feast. “Listen Mr. Fox, as much as we’d be honored to be the feast to a fine creature such as yourself, I’m afraid we would make a terrible dinner!”, said the first turtle. “Why?”, said the fox. “Well,” said the first turtle,” my friend and I here have caught a case of the rabies!” “Rabies?!”, said the fox. Of course, the fox knew what rabies could do, he had seen its effects with his own two eyes. The second turtle looked at the first turtle with eyes of confusion and proceeded to say, “No, we do not! Turtles do not carry rabies, remember?” Of course, this made the first turtle very nervous, he had just lied to save their lives and here the second turtle went ruining his plan. The fox, angry that he had been lied to, tried to go after the two turtles. “Wait, wait, wait!”, said the first turtle, “did I say rabies? I meant parasites; we have parasites!” This made the fox very uncomfortable. Did he really want a meal that contained parasites? He thought better of it. “Well, if you have parasites, I’ll have to go find other turtles. I’m on a strict parasite free diet you know.”, said the fox. The first turtle gave a sigh of relief. The second turtle looked at the first turtle and then the fox with the same confused eyes. He then said, “We do not! We just got checked yesterday and we were parasite free!” This made the fox even angrier than when they lied to him the first time! He was furious, seething even. He took the two turtles from the water back to a safe place and ate then for dinner without a second thought. “What a pleasant meal.”, thought the fox. Unfortunately for the fox, he died about a week later. Not from rabies, not from parasites, but from salmonella.

I’m not gonna lie, I chose this picture because I thought this turtle was so cute and charming. I can imagine this is what the first turtle would look like. (Image provided by Wikipedia author information included in link) 

 

Author’s Note: This was my version of  the two stories The Turtle and the King and The Turtle and the Geese. They were originally two separate stories, but I wanted to combine them and make them my own. I kept the original point of each story in, which I think made this version more interesting than what I thought it could be. The Turtle and the King had a turtle who lied to get out dying a brutal death, while The Turtle and the Geese had a turtle who could not keep his mouth closed. I had lots of fun thinking up dialog and a path for this story to go in, and I found a lot of inspiration in the two stories mentioned above. 

Bibliography: “The Turtle and the King” and “The Turtle and the Geese” from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. Find the story here.