Lizzy has been reading “The Art of the Personal Essay” edited by Philip Lopate, for some time now. It is a lengthy collection of the best personal essays from the past four hundred years. When she read Edward Hoagland’s “The Courage of Turtles”, Lizzy was inspired to respond to the essay with one of her own. She read Hoagland’s work very carefully, analyzed it in class, and proceeded to mirror stylistic aspects in her own essay, below.
My Discovery of Animal Boundaries
I have had many experiences with animals as a child growing up. These experiences have taught me great things. I learned that animals have their similarities to humans, but that they also have differences too. I learned that you cannot treat animals the same way as you can treat other people. Sometimes you want to just talk to them, tell them how you feel, but you can’t; they won’t understand you. Also, one has to realize that animals will have their own natural barriers. If one wants to be around animals, especially wild ones, he or she would have to set their boundaries. I will tell you some of my many animal experiences and what led me to think that I should treat animals differently than the way I used to.
I often wander around my neighborhood, a thirty minutes’ walk to Sleepy Hollow, NY, during the summer. Next to my house is a little forest full of trees and grass, and then a very steep hill that leads to the train tracks and then to the Hudson River. There’s a small old gate that allows you inside the forest, where I like to meet animals. I stroll down my neighborhood, a very peaceful one with lots of plants, and look at the different types of flowers and trees. However, no animal would like to go near the road, so I only walk around the neighborhood to look for interesting flowers that I either take a picture of or pluck out and then show to my parents. (I don’t pluck them out ever since I was told that it was bad.) Anyway, I then open the rusted gate to go inside of the forest. The gate makes a creaking sound and I look around to see that nobody catches me and thinks I’m weird. Many people have told me that if I go into the forest without high boots, I might get ticks. However, I never listen to their advice. I’m not really that afraid of ticks or any other types of dangerous bugs. I used to walk in the forest wearing flip flops but once but I got so many scratches and bruises from falling that I decided to wear sneakers from then on. There is only a little piece of flat land in the forest and the rest of it’s a very steep hill so I have to be very careful. I’m too scared to go down the steep hill. But one day, I will go down and maybe explore the land near the train tracks. I usually see rabbits, birds, deer, raccoons, and wild cats that get scared very easily, and squirrels. Once I saw a skunk but it ran away from me. What is interesting is that every time I go into the forest, I see this strange animal that looks like a platypus but without the beak. It just has a very long nose. The strange thing is that it doesn’t move. When you see an animal, you expect it to either run away or consider running away. But this platypus-shaped animal doesn’t run away from me. It just stares at me, like it wants to have a staring contest. Even as I walk away from the animal, it’s still staring at me, which gives me the shivers. I wonder why it’s not scared of people as other animals are. It’s a very rare occasion that I see animals around my neighborhood and when I do, I make sure that I get to hang around with that animal for a bit. As I metioned, I usually go in the forest to see them. However, one day I was walking home from school and I saw a grey cat lying on the smooth sidewalk. One half of the sidewalk had a shadow that a tree cast and the other half was sunny. I noticed how half the cat was lying under the shadow and the other half was lying under the sun. When I first saw this cat, I thought it was dead. But when I came closer, I saw that the cat was moving. When I came even closer noticing that there was no collar, the cat came up to me and licked me like I was its long-lost best friend. At that point, I didn’t really know what I should do. I hugged the cat and let it nudge against my jeans for a few minutes. The cat had green eyes with blue strikes in them and it looked fierce. I picked it up and the cat flip-flopped around until it was finally comfortable. With its head on my shoulders, the cat was so adorable that I was tempted to bring it back home. However, I remember that my dad told me how wild animals should stay wild. So I played with it for a few more minutes and then put it on the spot I found it on before. I still see that cat around and it turns out it has an owner, and a collar – perhaps that day the collar was on the hook.
My family and I went to Costa Rica about two years ago and we were staying at a resort by a muddy river for one night. We arrived at this small, remote town when the sky was darkening. Afraid of getting bitten by mosquitoes, we quickly went to our resort and went to sleep. The next day for breakfast, we went to a restaurant called Little Princess. Behind the restaurant was a beach. After eating breakfast, my family and I went to the beach to take some pictures and enjoy the view. The water was deep blue and the waves were calm and it was very soothing to look at. All of a sudden a dog ran up to us and started licking and hugging us. The dog looked like a white Labrador without so much fur. He was so skinny that I could literally count all of his ribs, which seemed to be fifty-seven. After playing and taking pictures with him for a little while, my family and I decided to head back to Little Princess, get some snacks, and go back to our resort. However, when we turned around we saw that the dog was still following us. I didn’t know what to do because we were going to leave to another town in a couple of hours by taking a ferry and the ferry didn’t allow any animals on it. The dog looked at us with its big brown eyes. It looked so innocent, a skinny dog standing on the street looking straight at us, asking for something. We gave him a couple strips of bacon and he ate them quickly and greedily. Finally at around four or five o clock, we had to take the ferry and leave the town. The dog followed us to our hotel, where we packed our stuff and gave the ticket collector our tickets to go on the ferry that picked us up at the side of the hotel. The ferry was there now, red and white, ready to take us down the muddy river. We got onto the ferry, excited, almost completely forgetting about the dog. However we were floating seven feet away from the dock when I turned around and saw the most heartbreaking thing. The dog was sitting down on the deck, with its head bowed and a look of betrayal in its eyes. I told my parents to look around and see. My dad said, “I forgot all about that dog.” My mom said, “Wow, I never thought that I’d like a dog in my life!”
Following that stop in the town by the muddy river in Costa Rica, my family and I went to Monteverde, Costa Rica. There we went horseback riding. This was probably the best horseback-riding place I have been. It was all nature; there were trees everywhere with hills, mountains, and amazing views. There were no people up the hill and all the horses looked strong and healthy. My family and I were amazed with the serenity of the whole activity. The people there were my family (which was three people) and another family (another three people) plus the tour guide. We were such a small group, containing of only seven. The other family had a boy that was either one or two years younger then me. We talked for a bit as we climbed up the steep mountain on our horses. It turned out that he was from New York also!
We stopped by a huge waterfall where we went in and got ourselves all wet. The waterfall was the color of dark blue and emerald green mixed together. The tour guide said that we could stand under the mini waterfall next to the main one.
As we came down the hill, the boy (Eddie) and I asked the tour guide if we could go ahead of the group. When the tour guide said yes, Eddie and I raced down the hill. I won (well, actually my horse did). I made the horse go faster than him and the horse did as I told him to do. The horse was white with brown spots. Its name was “Burrito-Domingo” and he really liked me. There was a hill that went down and just when you were about to fall off the mountain, there was a sharp turn. What we didn’t know, however, was that there were bulls and cows on the sides of the curve. Finally, after making a decision that racing on the curve was too dangerous, we made our horses walk to the turn. A big brown bull with huge horns got up and started walking. After following us for a few seconds, he started walking faster and faster. At this point, Eddie’s and my horse started galloping and jumping, trying to run away from the bull. This was terrifying. The bull was running straight at us, head first, horns pointing right at our horses. All of the sudden the bull came to a halt and went to eat grass with the normal cows. The tour guide appeared again and said that the brown bulls on the fields of the hills were wild and they were the most dangerous. My parents were laughing nervously, afraid to show me that they were afraid. Thanks for telling me now, Mr. Tour Guy!
Earlier on, when I was about seven or eight years old, I raised four turtles. My parents took me to Flushing, Queens. We saw turtles on sale that looked healthy and we bought them. About six months after we brought them home, my parents took me on a fishing trip with some family friends in Croton-on-Hudson. It took all of us a while to catch some fish but I finally figured out that if you crossed the bridge (scattered with goose poop) to the deep side of the lake, that you would have a higher chance of catching some fish. Everybody caught, in total, five fish, which we didn’t want to put back into the lake because we spent so much time aiming to catch. However, nobody wanted to take home five fish, either. They ended up voting that my family should take all the fish back home. When we took the fish home and put them in the turtle cage, I noticed how the fish were becoming weakly. They weren’t swimming fast and they looked exhausted. Then I noticed what was wrong: the water was dirty! It was slimy and the color of pale yellow. I washed the cage and filled clear water into it and put the fish with the turtles. After an hour I came back to check on the fish and noticed how they were all huddled to one corner. My turtles were coming to that corner. The turtles could sense that the fish were weak. I saw one of my turtles snap at a fish. Being that I was only so young, I thought that the turtle was just annoyed that the fish was in his water. But a couple of seconds later, the turtle took another snap and bit into the fish’s tail. At that point, all the other turtles saw this happen and did the same thing. Four turtles nibbled on four fish while the fifth fish swam around frantically. I decided to let each turtle eat one fish each, but I had forgotten about the fifth fish. The next morning when I woke up and finished brushing my teeth, I went back to check on my turtles. In the cage, I saw four happy-looking turtles with one headless fish.
After the fish situation, I lost my turtles one by one. One of them is now at my family’s friend’s house, a family that we can all trust to take good care of the turtles. Another, during the night, crawled out of its cage and couldn’t get back in. The cage was placed next to the heater because my family and I thought that it would be the best since it kept the turtles warm. However, the turtle, while it was out there in during the night somehow crawled under the heater for warmth. The next day when I went to go feed my turtles some breakfast, I noticed that one of my four turtles was missing. I searched all over the house for it and then finally, after seeing something green lying under the heater, I bent over and took a look at what as under there. The turtle was dead, burned from the heater. It was burning hot. I looked at it in my cupped hands and it was obvious to me that the turtle was dead. It was not moving, and seemed frozen in the heat of death, so my mother and I buried it in the garden. It was my fault that my third turtle disappeared. This turtle died because of unhappiness, or it just wasn’t fond of the cage and the dirtiness of the water. After walking home from school one day, I went to check on it and realized that it wasn’t budging; I poked its head around with a food stick and when it didn’t move, I gave up, dropped the food stick in the water and left. A few hours later, the turtle still didn’t move and still didn’t eat its food, and by then my mother had come home so I told her that my turtle wasn’t moving and she told me that it was dead.
The first cage was beautiful. It had a huge rock in the middle with fake palm trees on it. The turtles often climbed onto the rock and lay down to look at the palm trees. I could tell that the turtles were very happy, and because they were excited to be in their cage, I felt enthusiastic too. However, when my first turtle was fried, my mother took me to the supermarket. For a cage she bought a clear, plastic box. It looked like a box for storing things I don’t want anymore. I was astonished that I would put my own turtles in that ugly cage, but the cage was tall. And no turtle could ever crawl out of it. That was when I noticed that my turtles looked like they weren’t having fun in the cage. I tried everything: placing the most beautiful rocks in lovely patterns, arranging seaweed (that didn’t work out). Eventually, I realized that the ugly plastic cage didn’t permit anything to look beautiful. Then I gave up. I started cleaning out the cage about once every two weeks instead of once a week.
I hope my fourth turtle escaped to freedom instead of being trapped in the nasty cage I put him in. I used to take the turtles in my hand and let them crawl around the house. One day, I decided to let him take an adventure. I cupped it in my hands and kicked open the door and placed the turtle outside my door on the mat. I then closed the door and told myself to check on the turtle in ten minutes. After ten minutes, I looked out my door, and the turtle wasn’t there anymore. I never knew what happened to him. Perhaps it died. Or perhaps it went into the Hudson River and is still alive. My family and I decided at that point that we were sick of raising that one last turtle. We sold the turtle to another family friend who right now still has the turtle and is taking much better care of it than us.
When I was in fifth grade, I had the strangest yet the saddest bird experience ever. I was looking out my window and I saw in the bushes of my garden, a blue dot. I went outside, curious what the blue dot could be. I walked to the garden and saw that it was a blue egg in very neat nest. Being that it was summer and my family had not planned to travel, a nest in my garden got me pretty excited. From that day on when I found the nest, I started taking care of the bird, Birdie, while his mother was gone. Week by week I saw the baby bird growing older. I saw his mother going out for a few minutes to get some worms and feed it to the baby bird. I was going to go fetch a couple worms myself to feed to Birdie, but I couldn’t find any. I acted like Birdie was my pet and I started giving him tiny little pieces of bread. I often stroked his feathers. One day, when it was pouring outside, I looked out my bedroom window just to check how Birdie and his mother were doing. Birdie’s mother was hovering over the nest, seemingly afraid to get Birdie wet, herself soaking up all the rain. I could tell that Birdie’s mother was getting cold and a little too wet, so I quickly grabbed an black umbrella and two small towels, put on my jacket and headed outside in the pouring rain. I took the umbrella and placed it right over the birds on the bush so they wouldn’t get wet. I couldn’t figure out what I should do with the towels or why I brought them. Without thinking, I wrapped one towel around the nest and hung the other one right under the umbrella on a branch so the birds could dry off with the towel. Then I noticed that Birdie knew how to fly!
However, one day I went outside to look at Birdie and to see how much he had really grown. I totally forgot that he just learned how to fly. As I walked towards him, I noticed that he began to shuffle. Finally I was next to him and he looked very uncomfortable in his nest, which was now too small for him. I reached over to pet him. Birdie flapped his wings and flew out of his nest. I was so frozen stiff, afraid that Birdie wouldn’t return to his nest. I saw him crossing the road. Thank god, there were no cars at that time, for he would have been hit. I started chasing him around and around. He then became terrified of me and crawled through a tiny hole in the gate. I quickly climbed over the gate with my hands reaching out, ready to catch Birdie and put it in a cage. The forest that day was really dark. As I ran around looking for Birdie, I could hear screeches of all sorts and branches cracking. After about seven minutes of searching, I lost Birdie. I supposed that he would fly back to his nest later or his mother will get him. However after one hour, I checked back to see if Birdie was there or not. All I saw was Birdie’s mother with many worms dangling from her beak and she seemed to be screaming. I have never felt so guilty in my whole life. I felt so bad for the mother. She took care of her child, and I came through their relationship and made the bird fly away. I don’t know where Birdie is today. I hope he still remembers all the food catching and flying skills his mother taught him.
Recently, I took a walk around my neighborhood. I didn’t notice anything spectacular yet, for the seasons were just changing and not all the animals and flowers were out yet. However, towards the end of my short walk, I came across a deer that was lying under a tree. I walked a couple of steps it and realized that it wasn’t moving. The skin of the deer was a nice, light brown color. It was lying under the tree with its head bowed and staring at the trunk of the tree. I was literally next to the deer’s tail when I suddenly had a feeling that it was dead. I lay down next to it, thinking that it would run away. I was going to poke it when I saw a lady wearing a black coat and carrying a bunch of white and yellow garbage bags coming towards me. I stopped whatever I was going to do and watched the lady come towards me. The lady was approximately twenty to thirty years old and she talked calmly and understandingly. Apparently, this lady had seen the same exact deer many times before. She said that the deer had two fawns and her husband had died.
“I wouldn’t want to touch that deer if I were you. I wouldn’t even want to disturb it,” she said cautiously.
“Why not?” I asked.
“I’ve seen this doe many times before along with two other little deer. However, I have never seen the father before.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. My theory is that the father got run over by the train in the train tracks.”
“That’s so sad.”
“I know. I think this doe is very tired. It’s hard to find food for her children especially right now. Also, if her husband did die on the two tracks, then she would be haunted and not want to cross the tracks anymore. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to get water.”
“There’s a little creek where they can get water,” I stated, pointing in the forest.
“Well, hopefully that is where the doe gets her water supplies.”
“Yeah. I guess the doe is pretty tired,” I said sadly, looking at the deer that had its head tucked into its front legs.
“Yeah, I was going to bring it some food to eat. Something that would help her and her two babies.”
“Well, did you?”
“No because if I did, there is a probability that the deer would forget how to catch her own food.”
“Okay. I guess I better go now and not disrupt the deer,” I said quietly. The woman smiled and left in the opposite direction.
As I walked home, I thought of the world of humans as people who care about no one but themselves. I turned around and looked back at the deer and a picture appeared in my mind. I saw a happy looking deer family dancing along the grass of the forest. Then I saw a healthy looking male deer galloping across the tracks to get water from the river. A zooming train came rushing by and hit the poor deer. Then the deer didn’t move at all. I shuddered, hating what human beings were doing to animals.
The thing I learned from these many animal situations is that we as humans need to respect the boundaries of animals. If we cross these, then no one can know what could happen to the animals. When I look back to the many animal deaths I have experienced in my life, I see that humans caused most of them. It’s we who build machines to benefit ourselves, but have no idea what our inventions are doing to the organisms around us. We have no idea what harm we bring to animals around us. If one driver was to run over a small bird or squirrel, instead of stopping to check if that animal is okay, he or she would probably just keep on driving. Sure, there might be plenty of those kinds of animals. You can see squirrels, birds, and rabbits almost anywhere. However, they are living things just like us and have the right to survive. If that is true, shouldn’t we care enough to stop the machine and go see if they are okay? I learned not to disturb any natural thing around me. Before, I use to pluck flowers out of their stems and scare all the geese and birds from the park until they went flying in the water. But I learned that in a way, animals are the same thing as us and their boundaries, like ours, are natural.
If you don’t respect their boundaries, then they can turn around and fight back and perhaps injure. I was in a store one day in the hot summer and wanted to buy something cool, maybe an iced tea. I noticed a grey cat sitting on a box staring at me. Without asking the owners for permission, I went over to pet the cat. I stroked the cat and stared into its eyes. It seemed to be glaring at me. I turned around to see if anybody was looking at me strangely. I left my hand on the cat’s head and turned around. Luckily, no one was. Suddenly and ever so quickly, I felt my arm drop from the meowing cat’s head and I felt a hint of pain. I turned around to face the cat again and to look at my arm. On my arm was a long scrape that wasn’t yet bleeding. After ten seconds it started bleeding. I didn’t want to start screaming, or else that would have been embarrassing for people watching me, and also the owner of the shop would probably yell at me for petting his cat. The cat looked up at me and seemed to be snickering at me. It laughed and mocked my arm as it hopped down from the box and unhappily took a walk around the store.