Larry Appleton has always been a hero of mine. That quirky mess that he was while dealing with ridiculous sitcom dilemmas due to his distant cousin, Balki Bartokomous, from the tiny Greek island of Mypos, made me laugh as well as identify with the guy. Not that I have any chill foreign cousins who did the "Happy Dance" during any small fortunate event. I can identify with Larry's constant irritation. As a girl with two kid sisters and a big brother, I was at least always mildly irritated from the age of eight with small things such as having to do chores, baby sitting and dealing with occasional big brother harassments (like on April Fool's Day, when my brother froze all of my underwear). Certainly, I was known to become flustered, like Larry, and blurt a fist shaking "BALKI!" This being true, it really should go without saying that every Friday night during T.G.I.F., right after "Family Matters," "Step by Step," and "America's Funniest Home Videos," I was watching "Perfect Strangers" to see what types of shenanigans Balki would get Larry into this time.
I admired Larry Appleton so much so that I named my turtle after him. I thought this appropriate because I found Larry upside down in an ant hill, most certainly dead, covered in red ants. A very Appleton-like situation if you ask me: unfortunate from the beginning. After fishing Larry out of the ant hill thinking he would be an interesting specimen to look up in my Wildlife Fact File, I found that he was still very much alive. He appeared as though someone had punched him in the left eye and he could not open it. His shell was a dusty grey with yellow specks and his spine was a dull orange, like the broken lines on the highway. Because of his forlorn and scrappy look, I deemed him Larry. He watched me from inside the shell that he could not close with his one bright, light brown eye as I stared back at him, blinking. He refused to come out.
This was our relationship for the first week. After briefly asking my dad if I could keep the turtle, to which he responded, "Why, are you going to eat it?", and his quick waving "OK," I did my research on what type of turtle Larry could be and what accommodations he would require. I scored my Wildlife Fact File for Larry and could not find his species. After making the educated guess that Larry could not have been a terrapin, for he was no where near water when I found him in his unfortunate position (although I did, in my eight-year-old mind make a conjecture that he quite possibly could have fallen from a low-flying air plane on the way to an unknown location), or a Galapagos Tortoise, because well...from my knowledge, we lived no where near the Galapagos Islands, I turned to the library.
The Neva Lomason Library, just outside of Downtown Carrollton, is a place which, although not resourceful for a scholar, is quite suitable for third grade research. It is a place where, it seems, library research and the worth of knowledge is easily taken for granted because they also offer free computer and internet access, which is what a lot of people end up doing. Upon entry, one may find a cart holding National Geographic magazines dated as early as the 1940s, and savagely priced below their worth. (I purchased an issue of National Geographic from this library that is discussing what MIGHT happen if man were ever able to make it to the moon).
I set to work on Larry research the Saturday afternoon that I went to the library, begrudgingly in charge of my little sister, who wanted nothing more than to sit in the children's section and look at picture books. I grabbed several books on amphibians and reptiles and sat on the large kooshie pillows of the children's section as my sister looked at the pictures of some Madeline book. She would ask me questions every now and again about what Madeline was doing in a particular illustration, and I would make something up as she nodded her bow-ridden head and her pig tails bounced irritatingly.
I found that Larry was not:
A terrapin
A Galapagos tortoise
A Desert tortoise
A Soft-Shelled Turtle
A Sea Turtle
After seeing and reading about box turtles, I decided (independent of actual facts) that Larry was, indeed, a tiny box turtle who couldn't close his shell due to a certain handi-cap inflicted upon him as he lay upside down in the hill full of red ants. Satisfied by this, I gathered my research and found what Larry would want to eat, sleep on and enjoy and decided to establish this climate in a fishbowl on my desk in my bedroom.
Larry, by the time I had figured out his new way of life, had both eyes. We came to an understanding that we didn't have to be friends, but we had to co-exist, and with this understanding, Larry began to come out of his shell, blink, pee and dart this way and that when left to his own devices. I made his fishbowl livable, filled with dirt, moss (to keep the dirt in place) a small "built-in pool" and a hole in which he could sleep (I read that box turtles dug burrows occasionally).
I kept my turtle away from my sisters, for I had read "Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing." Logically, I knew that little kids do not eat turtles and that Judy Bloome had lost her mind when writing the story, but I was still wary. My sister Angela had a reputation for taking out small animals, and I learned my lesson from reading about poor Tribble the turtle, who was devoured by the little brother, Fudge (who should have gotten sick with salmonella). So Larry watched "Perfect Strangers" with me, sitting quietly on my stomach, instead of staying in my room, which I shared with my two sisters.
I admired Larry Appleton so much so that I named my turtle after him. I thought this appropriate because I found Larry upside down in an ant hill, most certainly dead, covered in red ants. A very Appleton-like situation if you ask me: unfortunate from the beginning. After fishing Larry out of the ant hill thinking he would be an interesting specimen to look up in my Wildlife Fact File, I found that he was still very much alive. He appeared as though someone had punched him in the left eye and he could not open it. His shell was a dusty grey with yellow specks and his spine was a dull orange, like the broken lines on the highway. Because of his forlorn and scrappy look, I deemed him Larry. He watched me from inside the shell that he could not close with his one bright, light brown eye as I stared back at him, blinking. He refused to come out.
This was our relationship for the first week. After briefly asking my dad if I could keep the turtle, to which he responded, "Why, are you going to eat it?", and his quick waving "OK," I did my research on what type of turtle Larry could be and what accommodations he would require. I scored my Wildlife Fact File for Larry and could not find his species. After making the educated guess that Larry could not have been a terrapin, for he was no where near water when I found him in his unfortunate position (although I did, in my eight-year-old mind make a conjecture that he quite possibly could have fallen from a low-flying air plane on the way to an unknown location), or a Galapagos Tortoise, because well...from my knowledge, we lived no where near the Galapagos Islands, I turned to the library.
The Neva Lomason Library, just outside of Downtown Carrollton, is a place which, although not resourceful for a scholar, is quite suitable for third grade research. It is a place where, it seems, library research and the worth of knowledge is easily taken for granted because they also offer free computer and internet access, which is what a lot of people end up doing. Upon entry, one may find a cart holding National Geographic magazines dated as early as the 1940s, and savagely priced below their worth. (I purchased an issue of National Geographic from this library that is discussing what MIGHT happen if man were ever able to make it to the moon).
I set to work on Larry research the Saturday afternoon that I went to the library, begrudgingly in charge of my little sister, who wanted nothing more than to sit in the children's section and look at picture books. I grabbed several books on amphibians and reptiles and sat on the large kooshie pillows of the children's section as my sister looked at the pictures of some Madeline book. She would ask me questions every now and again about what Madeline was doing in a particular illustration, and I would make something up as she nodded her bow-ridden head and her pig tails bounced irritatingly.
I found that Larry was not:
A terrapin
A Galapagos tortoise
A Desert tortoise
A Soft-Shelled Turtle
A Sea Turtle
After seeing and reading about box turtles, I decided (independent of actual facts) that Larry was, indeed, a tiny box turtle who couldn't close his shell due to a certain handi-cap inflicted upon him as he lay upside down in the hill full of red ants. Satisfied by this, I gathered my research and found what Larry would want to eat, sleep on and enjoy and decided to establish this climate in a fishbowl on my desk in my bedroom.
Larry, by the time I had figured out his new way of life, had both eyes. We came to an understanding that we didn't have to be friends, but we had to co-exist, and with this understanding, Larry began to come out of his shell, blink, pee and dart this way and that when left to his own devices. I made his fishbowl livable, filled with dirt, moss (to keep the dirt in place) a small "built-in pool" and a hole in which he could sleep (I read that box turtles dug burrows occasionally).
I kept my turtle away from my sisters, for I had read "Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing." Logically, I knew that little kids do not eat turtles and that Judy Bloome had lost her mind when writing the story, but I was still wary. My sister Angela had a reputation for taking out small animals, and I learned my lesson from reading about poor Tribble the turtle, who was devoured by the little brother, Fudge (who should have gotten sick with salmonella). So Larry watched "Perfect Strangers" with me, sitting quietly on my stomach, instead of staying in my room, which I shared with my two sisters.
posted by Anisa @ 2:28 PM
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