Last week's column found me in a race against time as I whipped the oats out of every last one of the 98 anemic horses pastured under the hood of my '95 Neon. The mission was to make it across a fair chunk of Holmes and Wayne counties in time to catch the singing skit of my daughter, Sylvia, in her last-day-of-school talent show. It was a perilous journey, as I reached speeds approaching 50 miles- per-hour on certain stretches of wide-open, downhill, tailwind- driven straightaway. And I was clicking along right on time when I was brought to a sputtering stop by a creature that had crawled forth from the ancient depths of the Killbuck Marsh.

I don't think I need to dwell upon the irony of having to stop the least rapid of any automobile I have ever driven for none other than the very poster-child of sluggish movement -- a turtle -- but you get the picture. And this was no run-of-the-fishpond turtle that you'd carry home in a bucket to show your mom; this thing was a masterpiece of hard-shelled survival technology roughly the diameter of my Neon's spare tire, and weighing every bit as much as a full- grown beagle. I would have stopped to gawk even if I hadn't had to stop to survive -- and when I say survive, I mean it. Had I hit the giant snapper with my tin-can of a car I would have undoubtedly been sent spiraling into the mucky depths to breathe my last in the company of tadpoles, leeches and other such critters. This beast would have easily survived the collision, then pried open the mangled sheet-metal to gobble-up my remains!