We have been traversing the concrete highways, edged with dry and broken grass, among the grasshoppers and ants and other turtles like us, turning aside for nothing, dragging our high-domed shells slowly, plodding restlessly on tender feet, and holding our heads high. Not walking, since we are stuffed, but more like being boosted or dragged, leaving our drought-plagued home in California behind, like so many like us, in search of the fertile- or at least more damp- land of Oklahoma. Dodging sedans and trucks and the occasional eerily silent Prius, sometimes grazed or flipped like tiddly-winks, spun like coins and turned on our backs, but always, always turning ourselves again upright, looking ahead with humorous eyes, plodding on tired stuffed nails, slipping steadily forward.

Note: This family of three turtles must be adopted together. We don’t know the names of the other two turtles, but we’ve taken to calling them Rose and Connie.