CHAPTER VI
The Quiet Turtles
"And that's all that they told you?" asked Doc, as he, Jack and Mary sat with Ed around the comfortably warm fire in their longhouse after a filling but adventuresome lunch. Actually, Ed thought that the baked squirrel entree wasn't too bad. The taste was a little gamy and they had to watch out for the tiny little bones, but over-all he thought that it was a satisfactory lunch. Ed wasn't altogether surprised to learn that his three companions had previously dined on squirrel. While she grew up with Uncle Jack Mary ate many unusual things.
"That's pretty much all they said, aside from the fact that before he was chosen to be the Turtle Man his name was Talking Turtle," confirmed Ed, who had just told the little company everything, including what he knew about the jants. It had felt good to tell Mouse and Turtle Man his secrets, and it felt doubly good to openly disclose everything to Mary and to Uncle Jack and his friend Doc.
"Nephew, you're just full of surprises, aren't you!" Jack said. "That jant business is every bit as crazy and wondrous as what's going on here with the Mohawk Tribe and their Mountain, I suspect. And I'd like to personally meet this Jerry Green fellow! He sounds to me like a kindred spirit."
"By the gods I hope not!" Ed said. Yes Jerry had saved his life, but he was also a barrel full of trouble. Now that he thought about it, Ed realized that in many respects Jack did indeed remind him of Jerry, except that although Jack was bright, Jerry was a super genius. Their similarity was an unsettling thought.
"Where are the jants that secretly traveled here with us?" Mary asked.
"Pretty much all over the Reservation by now, I suppose," Ed said. "I spoke with them first thing after visiting with Turtle Man. They said that the Mountain itself is too cold to interest them, so we don't have to worry about them not following Turtle Man's edict that they stay away from it."
"If they can be trusted," said Doc. "Who knows what the little buggers are actually thinking?"
Ed didn't come to the defense of his diminutive acquaintances. True, the jants at Jerry's request had saved his life and protected him and Mary from most climate change driven invasive critters after that, but he had never developed a feeling of closeness with them or felt that he understood them. They were after all insects, and Ed had a lot of trouble figuring out the motives and character of even his fellow humans! On the other hand he liked bugs as much as the next guy: which is to say not so much, but as with most insects, he had simply gotten used to jants being around. They were tolerable as long as they were seldom seen and weren't biting him or eating his food.
"As to my second assignment from Mouse and Turtle Man, I don't know where to even start. How does one talk with a turtle? And how will I tell which turtle is the wisest? Will the wise one spout poetry or should I give them all I.Q. tests or what?"
"To talk with a turtle you probably need to have one on hand," suggested Doc. "Maybe you should find a turtle, any local turtle, and ask it where to find the wisest turtle that it knows of. After all, maybe it takes one to know one."
"That sounds logical but we certainly haven't noticed any turtles at all since we've been here," Mary noted.
"Wrong time of the year for them," explained Doc. "Much too chilly for them lately. They've dug themselves under leaves and soil by now, and have probably gone into hibernation. Of course you probably wouldn't much notice them even in the summer; they are small, quiet, shy, and very well camouflaged."
"Swell!" Ed said. "I'm supposed to find a particular wise talking turtle and I probably won't be able to find any turtles at all, let along an awake and wise talking turtle. Besides that, I have no idea how to talk with a turtle anyway."
"Maybe you can already talk with turtles," Jack conjectured. "Maybe due to the Jerry drugs it's easy for you to talk to turtles but you just haven't met any yet since your transformation. Heck, maybe you have Dr. Doolittle-like powers and can talk with any animal. Have you been to a zoo or pet shop lately?"
"No," confessed Ed. "If I had been, wouldn't I be more likely to be able to talk with dogs and cats?"
"Probably," said Doc. "Only a hundred and seventy million years of evolution separate humans from dogs and cats. That is to say, our latest common ancestor is estimated to have lived eighty-five million years ago, allowing the thought patterns of each to diverge since that time for a total of a hundred and seventy years of evolutionary change considering our genetically separate evolutionary lines. That we can get along at all with dogs and cats must obviously be accounted for by some sort of convergent evolution, but such beasts are close cousins to humans compared to turtles. You'd have to go back in time perhaps four times as long to find a common ancestor for humans and turtles."
"Any genetic similarity may well be irrelevant though," pointed out Jack, "since you can already telepathically converse with ants that share a common ancestry with humans that is probably at least twice as ancient as your common ancestry with turtles."
"What kind of turtles live around here?" Mary asked, turning the conversation back towards something perhaps useful.
"Common wood turtles, mostly, I suspect," said Doc. "They roam about on land but like to stay within walking distance of streams."
"They have short little turtle legs and they probably move them very slow," noted Mary, "so they must remain quite close to streams."
"Maybe that's why Turtle Man reminded me that turtles are slow," Ed reasoned, "so that we would look for them near water."
"There's a small stream near here," said Jack. "Let's go."
The four of them spent the rest of the day traipsing through forests and fields near the stream in a hopeless search for turtles. They looked under countless rocks, leaves, and logs, while Ed broadcasted telepathic turtle greetings and 'listened' in vain for a telepathic turtle response. Jack noted that since a mud-covered sleeping turtle probably looked much like a mud-covered rock, they could have even found some turtles and not even realized it.
It was a tired, frustrated group that reconvened for supper at the longhouse as sunset approached. "Ever hear of a snipe hunt?" asked Jack. "As a young boy scout I was encouraged to run about in the woods all night, yelling and making weird sounds to attract fictional forest creatures known as snipes. It turned out that it was all a silly hoax of course. Our pack leaders sat back at the campfire laughing and munching down s'mores and hot-dogs while we scouts naively ran around all night making fools of ourselves. Not that we wouldn't have probably somehow made fools of ourselves anyway, of course."
"Do you think that our Mohawk friends are pulling a hoax on us?" asked Ed.
"Maybe," said Doc. "Turtles are such small minded critters I can't imagine them communicating with humans. Maybe this turtle talk business is the Mokawk version of a snipe hunt."
"No I don't think it's a hoax," said Jack. "And the snipe thing wasn't a total hoax either. It turns out that there actually are small woodland birds called snipe, but you can't find them by blundering around in the forest all night yelling. Among some Iroquois tribes the snipe is even a clan animal."
"Is there some useful purpose behind your amusing snipe parable?" Doc asked.
"Perhaps we are going about this the wrong way," Jack suggested.
"So what's the right way?" Ed responded.
"We obviously don't know, but we apparently haven't found it yet," said Mary. "However I think that Jack is right. Perhaps at this point we need to use our heads more and our feet less."
Doc shook his head. "Well then, if admitting ignorance is indeed the first step towards wisdom I suppose that we've just made some real progress. Any actual useful thoughts?"
"Let's ask the Mohawks how they find turtles," suggested Jack. "I've eaten turtle soup several times while I've lived here. It's very tasty."
"OK, then why don't you ask Tribe members about that tomorrow," said Doc. "In the meantime I'll consult the Tribe reference library about turtles."
"And I'll consult myself," said Ed. "Thanks for all the help but this is supposed to be so
me sort of trial for me, not you guys. Whatever the answer is, it must mostly have something to do with me and my telepathic abilities."
That night as Mary slept soundly Ed thought and thought about turtles but came up with no new ideas about how to speak with them or where to find them. With all the concentration his tired brain could muster, a hundred times he thought such things as "HELLO TURTLE; WHAT'S UP?" and then 'listened' intently for a response, but 'heard' none.