How to Take Your Turtle for a Walk

Once upon a time there was a little boy named John and he had a pet turtle named Brad. John lived in a big house outside the city with his Mom and Dad and big sister Sally, who had already started kindergarten, and was very smart.

Brad was a Box Turtle that John had gotten for Christmas, and he lived in a large aquarium by the window in John's bedroom. The aquarium was a miniature turtle world with plants and stones and gravel and a sparkling, turtle-sized pond. Brad ate worms mostly, which John fed him every day. John also sprayed Brad with water every morning, since Box Turtles don't like getting dried out.

One Friday afternoon, sister Sally came into John's bedroom after school and found him staring sadly into the big aquarium at Brad.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I'm not sure." said John. "I think Brad might be sick. He hasn't moved all day. He didn't even eat his breakfast!" The chubby worm that John had dropped into the aquarium that morning was still scrunching and un-scrunching itself beside the pond.

Sally came over and looked into the aquarium, shaking her head. "You worry too much," she said. "He's just asleep." She reached inside and knocked on Brad's back. "Did you try to wake him?"

"Don't!" said John, pulling her hand away. "You're not supposed to knock on a turtle!"

"Who told you that? asked Sally, with scorn.

"No one. I just know if I was a turtle I wouldn't want anyone knocking on me!"

Sally shrugged, sitting on John's bed to contemplate the turtle. "I've got it!" she said. "He's bored. He doesn't like being cooped up here. He needs to go for a walk."

"A walk? You mean like a dog?"

"Of course, like a dog! You know how sad Archie gets when he needs to go for his walk. I think Brad needs to go for a walk!"

John wasn't sure about this, but couldn't disagree. It was true that their dog Archie got depressed if he didn't get his walk twice a day, and this could be true of turtles, also.

"But Brad has no leash and no collar," remarked John. "Do they have them for turtles?"

"Of course, they have them for turtles!" said Sally and, since she went to kindergarten and was very smart, John believed her.

"Let's walk down to the pet store on the corner," said Sally, and so they did.

John and Sally searched up and down the aisles of the pet store, but couldn't find a leash or collar for Brad. Of course, it was ridiculous for a pet store not to carry such important items, but this was no problem for John and Sally, who decided to make their own. They went back to the house and took a ribbon off Sally's teddy bear and cut it down to size and found some string in a drawer in the kitchen and used it to make a leash. Then they lifted Brad out of his aquarium, took him outside into the backyard, and set him down.

As soon as Brad's tummy touched the grass, his head and feet popped out. He was already feeling better, so Sally must be right! John knelt down and eased the collar over Brad's tiny neck and then stood up and gently tugged on the leash, but Brad refused to budge. In fact, he seemed to get depressed again, and tried to go back in his shell.

John and Sally waited. And waited. And waited. And, finally, Brad stirred and began to crawl and John gave the leash another tug to encourage Brad to walk down the garden path with him. As soon as John pulled on the leash, Brad flopped down on his tummy again and pulled in his legs.

"Hopeless case!" exclaimed Sally, as she spotted a friend on the sidewalk in front of their house. "Brad must like being depressed," she said, running off to meet her friend.

John was losing patience, too, but he had seen signs that Brad was cheering up, and decided that the turtle just needed more time. So again he waited, and waited, and waited... and finally Brad poked out his sturdy legs and began to move.

This time, John decided not to tug on the leash. Instead, he just followed along with Brad, leaving some slack, to see where the turtle would go.

John soon discovered that Brad was not interested in staying on the path, but preferred to wander, willy-nilly, here and there, lumbering through the flower bed, around the swing set, through the tomato patch, past the rose bush, and over the mound beside the apple tree.

"Funny," thought John, "Brad is taking me for a walk and not the other way around!"

Well, Brad certainly didn't need a leash or a collar for that, so John slipped off Brad's collar and stuffed it with the leash into his pocket. Then, he continued following Brad as he crawled around and around and ended up in the corner of the yard where John once kept a pet rabbit. There was a pen there, and Brad scuttled into the pen, stopping beside the hutch where the rabbit used to live. As John watched, Brad stuck his nose into a patch of grass, pulled out a worm, and started munching.

John could see that Brad had found a new home for himself, a home that was like the natural world where he was born, and where he could hunt for worms and bask in the sun and sleep in the shade like turtles do in the wild. Clearly, Brad did not want to live in the house like a human; he wanted to live outside like a turtle! So John closed the gate, leaving Brad to enjoy his new home, then went to find Sally and her friend so that he could explain what had happened.

"If you want to take your turtle for a walk," he told them, "here's how you do it. You follow along and go where the turtle goes."