To make sense of this story I first have to tell you about two different stories from my childhood.

In the first, on a walk I once took with Mum and Dad when I was very little. Perhaps I was 5 years old. We were just up by my primary school at the end of our street. Walking past some pigeons. I don’t know exactly why he said it but it was probably because I begged them to get me one for my birthday. Or just because.

My Dad told me that if I wanted a pigeon all I had to do was catch one. I could keep it if I did. And to catch it he said, all I had to do was throw salt on it’s bum. This, apparently, makes it so the pigeons can’t fly or walk. Because the salt on it’s bum stings and its bum muscles squeeze in real tight and they can’t walk properly. Then all you have to do is catch it.

For YEARS I believed him. I actually thought it was true. And in grade five, I had other kids convinced of this too.

In the second story I am seven years old. I was yabbying under the bridge at the Euroa caravan park. I had thought it a good idea to leave my line with it’s steak on it over night. To see if I could catch something in the morning. That was all good and well except that when I went to check my line in the morning there was no yabby. Instead, when I pulled on the line it seemed to be stuck. So I pulled harder. And when I finally got the line to move closer to the surface, there at the end of it, holding on to that bit of steak for dear life…was a turtle.

From that point on, for the rest of our 5 week holiday, I begged Mum and Dad to get me a turtle. They DID!

I, being the original character that I am, named it Myrtle. Dad and I built it a pond with a fence around it and I would wonder on down each day to feed it.

I don’t know how long we’d had this turtle when we went to my cousin’s 7th birthday party. I don’t think it was long. But when we came home, Myrtle was gone. It ran away. It climbed it’s little fence (I vaguely remember that it COULD climb the fence) and disappeared. Never to be seen again.

And now to present day. Where I start wondering about my turtle. Thinking about the salt and the pigeons and the turtle. Wondering, if maybe my turtle died. But Mum and Dad didn’t want me to get upset so maybe they lied and said it ran away instead. Just like you hear people telling kids about their dogs who “ran away” when really Mum or Dad backed over it in the drive way. All the while, the kids are so young and trusting that they believe everything their parents tell them. Like, how you can catch a pigeon by throwing salt on it’s ass.

Yesterday I had to know. Because if I could believe Dad for years that I could catch a pigeon by throwing salt on it’s behind, then how easy would it be to believe my turtle “ran away”?

I sent both Mum and Dad a text asking if Myrtle had died and not run away. Now that they’re divorced they’d either both say the same thing, or they’d each tell a different story.

Dad replied first. He tells me the turtle really did run away. And when I said I didn’t want to be one of those gullible kids that believed their turtle had run away when it was actually dead and that I was having trouble believing him because of the pigeon story, he STILL tried to tell me you could catch a pigeon with salt…as long as you got close enough. But the turtle really did run away.

Then Mum replied. Like Dad, she swears the turtle ran away and that we never did find it.

I’m still unsure. They each have told the same story. But Tim and I discussed this and perhaps, when I was very little and lying in bed, Mum and Dad stood over me with dead turtle in hand and one said to the other “She can never know about this”

Or maybe, when they got divorced it was a part of their settlement. You can have the couch, but the girl never finds out about the turtle. Take it to the grave.

I just have this image in my head of my head stone when I die. It will probably read something like this.

Here lies Boo.

Wife. Mother. Daughter.

Gullible turtle owner to the end.