Best Turtle Rescue
5/11/1

I�m in the lab centrifuging some nasty stuff and calibrating my pH meter. Cartoon Lady comes in holding the largest turtle that I�ve seen come off the road on the way into the plant and says some happy stuff while the turtle pees on the floor. She happily stomps off to show someone else the turtle she has rescued from the road.

I get a little inwardly upset. I follow and say, �You are going to let it go, right?� She is, but she wants to show everyone. While she is showing everyone, she decides that she is going to keep it and let her kids see it. I�m against that, but am too frustrated not to actually bristle at people, so I retreat to the batcave while Labman talks to a child on the phone.

I could tell he was talking to a young child because he repeated stuff and asked about her brother or some such stuff. I was trying to keep the steam from coming out my ears.

Teutonic Boss comes in and looks at me. He knows the deal. He knows I can�t stand for this, but will I act.

�The nail that sticks up gets hammered back down.�

TBoss talks to me about it and tells me that she has it sitting next to her office and is planning on taking it to her kid�s school.

I�d calmed myself enough, and it was time to be humorous Postwood while debating my point. I go to Cartoon and tell her about the fact that it is dirty and carried germs. I also mention that I hope it poops on the kids at school and they all have to go to the hospital and that it bites a few digits off the kids too. I don�t really mean it, but I�d already made my case that the turtle is stressed and we aren�t doing it any good keeping it in our building while it pees on the floor.

Then it was like I was in a Greek bath and I realized that my body displaced water, or maybe not, but a good thing happened.

I told Cartoon to be mentally prepared for me to steal the turtle and free it. The Director was standing there at the time and he said that letting it go needed to be done. Cartoon said �Ok� to me, not him.

Normally Cartoon is out of her office and talking to people, making copies, whatever, a good portion of the morning. You couldn�t have pried her out of that office today. She knew I was coming for the turtle.

I finished volatile acids and then peeked in her office. She was still there and noticed me. I asked, �You did wash your hands after touching that thing?� She said yes and I left.

I recruited [guy I can�t think of appropriate name for now] to keep a look out his door and to call me if Cartoon left her office. He was supposed to call me and say, �The horses are on the track� if she left her office.

Later, I�m changing the blueprint manifest printout�s format with Pseudo-Zen Temp and we finally get it right. We weren�t really planning on going to the copy shop and getting it laminated just then, but since we had a discussion about whether you could get to a certain street from another street using I-565, we had to go out then.

I walked into Cartoon�s office to get some petty cash.

She wasn�t there.

I had to find the turtle. I looked in boxes, all over the floor, under her desk, and then saw part of his shell. She had put him in the bottom shelf of her filing cabinet and wrapped him in paper towels. He was cold since the AC is freakish around here.

I had already prepped my van with a box in the floorboard of the passenger side. I took the turtle outside, had to set him on the Sub-Director�s car so I could open the van door, and put him in the box. I got in and got out of there.

There is a dirt road that leads out of the plant and runs along the waterway to the north. I took that road and went far enough on it in my city vehicle that Cartoon would not want to go that far in her Mitsubishi Expo that she still has payments on.

I set him down and noticed that he was so cold; he probably wasn�t going to move for a while. Just in case Cartoon came looking for him, I covered him in weeds that I pulled up.

When I was washing my hands in the lab after I got back, Cartoon came to the lab door and said, �I don�t really agree with what you did.� I said that was OK, that I really didn�t agree with what she did either. We left it at that.

Pseudo-Zen Temp and I went and got that lamination done at the copy shop. When we got back, Tboss came into my office. I expected that I was in trouble. I don�t know what kind of trouble I can get in for freeing wild animals, but hey, you never know. He told me he heard about me setting the turtle free.

He raised both hands above his head and said, rather singsong, �Hero-man!�