Illusion of Words

The Missing Terrapin

We keep two terrapins in my home. One male, one female, with two totally different personalities. The male, called Sir Big, is huge, hungry, and timid. The female is called Lady Green. She’s small, doesn’t care much for food, and is brave and adventurous. When you think about it, Lady Green’s IQ is probably double of Sir Big’s.

Lady Green always escapes. It isn’t the first time she escaped today. Everytime she happens to be in the container with shorter walls, she always climbs out and runs away. One would think that Sir Big, being bigger, would climb out more easily. Truth is, I haven’t seen him climb out once. He’s too clumsy, in my opinion.

They always have a special container to be fed in, in order to prevent contamination of their tank’s water, and that container has much shorter walls. My mother fed them in the morning, and forgot to put them back.

And so, when she checked on them, there was only one terrapin in the small container. Lady Green was gone! My mother searched around the area, along with my sister and, for a while, my father. My little brother and I were both in school at that time.

In the afternoon, we searched high and low. Even braved ourselves (and our respiratory system) to search in the ‘Place of Darkness and Shoes’. That place belonged to our neighbour who takes one of the six apartments on the floor we live. And that place is definitely where you do not want to be, yet Lady Green was found there a couple of times.

It seems like the only person destined to find Lady Green will always be GL. Everytime Lady Green goes missing, she comes out to help us find, and in the end, it is she who will cry out, “I found her!”

Lady Green was found behind the luggage, a dark and dusty place. She was covered with sand. Our hearts were warmed and we were so relieved; it was like the parable of the lost sheep that Jesus told. We were like the shepherd in that story, searching for the lost sheep (except that in this case it’s a terrapin). Even though it has been many times she was lost and found, each time we wonder if it’s the last time we’d ever see her, and each time we find her, we’re so happy and angry at the same time.

I guess we can taste a bit God’s feelings when we repent and are found again. So after hours and hours of disappearance, and after a full hour of a search and rescue mission that almost left us in despair and without hope, Lady Green is back, swimming in her tank where she belongs.

One thing I wonder: Will she ever learn to stay in her tank? The dangerous world outside is not for tiny terrapins.

(By the way, I would post some pictures, except that the camera has gone a little bonkers, but the main problem is that the USB port is……)

Yay, a picture:

The camera that takes ugly pink pictures…

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