When you’re used to city speed, a farm feels like it’s standing still. But in this funny farm story, a wise turtle shows that if you move too fast, you miss the best parts of the show.
You might not know me, but that’s alright. When I was just a young’un, knee-high to a grasshopper, I came to a new home called Firefly Farm. My folks had packed up all our worldly possessions in a tiny pickup truck and moved us way out to the boondocks. We arrived at this Firefly place, and let me tell you, it was a wild, ramshackle ranch that looked rough enough to give a person the shivers.
Well, that first day I had the swing of things, and I reckoned it to be the dullest place this side of the Mississippi. There were no skyscrapers, no traffic, not even a single pizza place that delivered! Just crops and cows as far as you could witness.
I moped about, giving every person the continual stinkeye. But old Timothy the turtle wasn’t having none of my pity party. He sidled up, slower than a slug in snow, and commenced to telling me some whoppers that were plum truer than anything you’ll ever hear.
Timothy was ancient as the hills. That old terrapin slapjack had been bunked down at Firefly longer than the farm’s very fields! Timothy vowed he’d seen it all – from the hole-rotten days of the sod-busters till the arrival of new-fangled gizmos like the telephone. I reckoned he was just windier than a busted beller, telling wildly stretched yarns like a sidewinder does.
But that crusty ornery old reptile won me over by letting me tag along with him on his dawdling daily rambles around the farm. We spent every sunbeam from dawn to dusk meandering about, committing no particular acts of mischief or outlawry, but just taking in the scenery.
Turns out Timothy’s turtle’s eye view of the world, creeping hardly faster than a stone’s throw, showed all manner of curiosities that us high-stepping folks miss when we rush here and there.
We trailed behind a gullywhumper of ants, plotting some feisty invasion of a bread basket left out by mistake. We studied the finest spiderweb spinners, putting all our circus aeronauts and aerialists to shame.
And each evening I marveled at the firefly glimmers winking in the dusky gloaming like a million little jackanapes letting off firecrackers.
Timothy was more sage than a clabberhead clogger, droning on with his pleasantly sleepy drawl sharing wisdom about life’s rhythms and how all good things come to those who can wait. I started to grasp the attraction of just ambling around and opening your eyes to nature’s little miracles happening all the time.
One day, Timothy suddenly stopped and pointed with his wrinkled, old claw. “There’s ol’ Jeremiah, croaking out orders like he’s the big boss of the pond. But you know what? I never once have seen that lazy old hoptoad lift a finger, ‘cept to snatch a fly that buzzed too close to his big yap.”
I giggled at the self-important frog puffing out his chest. It was just another one of the silly, simple joys of life on the farm that Timothy had taught me to appreciate.
From the sunny solstice to the end of summer’s heat, I had become as slow and patient as Timothy himself. But I didn’t mind one little bit. In fact, I reckoned there wasn’t no better way to enjoy the lazy days with my newfound shelled mentor. You can have your modern fiddle-faddles and fancy talk—us two naturalists will just mosey along at our own gait, awing at bees and butterflies and staying one step ahead of the calamus weed all the days of our lives.
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