When Turtles Attack!

The best way to describe Sara's experience in the Sacred Grove is by typing the statement she made as we were leaving, "How could he have possibly prayed in here, this place is teaming with vicious beasts!" She's exactly right, if you consider prancing deer vicious beasts. As we were meandering down the trail we heard a thunderous noise coming towards us, accompanied by the cracking sound of wood snapping. I'm sure the fear for Sara was not unlike that felt by the islanders on LOST as the smoke monster approaches, leaving uprooted trees in its wake. There must have been a dozen deer that came zipping across the path about ten feet ahead of us, and I gotta tell ya', those things are loud when they're in a hurry. Sara claims she was actually afraid of the wolf that was likely giving these deer chase. I don't believe her, mostly because she's afraid of any non-human that can't use a litter box, as evidenced by the following list of critters that have caused her to dig her claws into my arm since we moved to Wisconsin:

• The Hell Squirrel - One day I got home from church and Sara had her arms in her nervous stance (hands clasped together on her chest), she shreiked to me that there was some sort of giant rodent hooked to the screen door and trying to get in. Sure enough, there was a very angry squirrel clasped onto the door. I did what any good husband would do, and got the video camera out to film Sara's squaks and shudders every time the squirrel moved. This rodent problem was eventually solved with a water gun.


• The Mysterious Badger Possum - We were driving around late at night testing out our new stereo thingy when a dog-sized rodent creature came out of the bushes, looked at us with its glowing eyes, then scampered back in. Sara is still 100% sure that it was a blood-thirsty nocturnal badger-dog-possum and always drives a little faster by those bushes. The rat of the Baskervilles.
  
• The Snapping Turtle - A few days ago Sara and Zoe were floating about by the edge of the pool when they looked up to see an "enormous snapping turtle that tried to eat us". This one reminds me a lot of that rabid swimming bunny that attacked Jimmy Carter. It hissed and snapped at them and was fast as lightning. Fortunately there was a man there with a long stick that nudged the turtle into the bushes. This one is actually legit, I saw animal control wrangling the prehistoric beast into a sack a few days later and a few blocks away. We looked this sucker up, and here's a picture of the Alligator Snapping Turtle, certainly not a cuddly creature.


• The Skunk Ape - On a cold wintery day (one of 300 per year) we were driving next to the forest by the Middle School when we saw a two-legged creature walking through the bushes. It was tall and walking very slowly. We were sure we had seen Bigfoot. A few moments later we nearly ran bigfoot over as this super genius middle schooler walked out of the forest and tried to cross the street in front of our car. Moron.