I’m sorry to roadkill. I’m sorry you were on the road when you were killed. That must be a lonely place to be. Unless you’re like, the Jack Kerouac of possums. And still, even then. I’ve been reading a bit about the hero’s journey. I tend to forget that concept is extended to Jesus Christ, which is funny, because a lot of our understanding of the hero’s journey is shaped by Christianity, which is dumb, because it was invented before that, in Islamic epic poetry. Recently I called Vermont’s state animal control line. Because I saw a snapping turtle attempting to cross the freeway. This might sound silly or hard to believe because highways are fast and turtles can be small, but if you’re familiar with New England Snapping Turtles, you’ll know that some of these big freaky babies weigh over seventy pounds. Their claws are longer than my dog’s entire paw, and they seem to carry entire chunks of earth on their backs, like a fantasy turtle in an animation. So what I’m saying is that I saw this turtle in the front windshield of the car and then again in the rear window as we sped by. I was passenger as my lover drove us north. I became overwhelmed with feeling for the turtle. This was clearly a hero’s journey! Snatching a bout of phone service I dialled animal welfare, who put me through to the state troopers, who apparently you report wildlife concerns to when you’re on those long green highways. They said uhhh ma’am we are not gonna dispatch a patrol for one snapping turtle and I said but it’s really big and they said I could leave a message and maybe someone would get around to checking it out later. This didn’t feel good to me. I was now a stand-in guardian to a local amphibious hero and I couldn’t even see it anymore because there was nowhere to pull over. I said to my lover that the correct thing to do was to cross the freeway, retrace our route backwards, and somehow stop oncoming traffic while helping the snapping turtle into a cardboard box to be left prominently but safely on the side of the road. I kept saying it’s mile marker 117. Everyone was saying no to me when it came to this turtle. So I remembered the time in Ohio that I’d contacted a guerilla urban squirrel rescue upon discovering a dying infant red squirrel. Using my dwindling phone bars I rapid fired an iCloud email to a turtle whisperer’s website email address. His home page was not turtles, it was actually a picture of him really close up, a forty-looking year old white guy with a crew cut and bags under his eyes. He looked not well. There was some stuff about Jesus on his website and how that brought him to turtles. I was desperate and ignored the religiosity. By the time the email was out of pending in SENT, we were miles away from the turtle. I left the Christian crew cut guy my contact info just as I had for Vermont animal welfare by way of the state troopers. No one got back to me.  Neither did the squirrel rescuers all those years ago, come to think of it. I can’t know for sure what happened to the turtle, but I have my suspicions. Things were really weird for a little while after that.