My mom has a little pond her in yard, right off of the deck.  It’s like her little peace place.  There are cute statues, including a little gnome I gave her.  A few years ago, my brothers and I joined forces to put in a larger and deeper pond.  There was mud everywhere, and it was a fun effort.  We work well together, we three brothers.

Lurking in the darkness of this deeper pond is Slider, the hungry turtle.

He’s snapped at dogs, and he’s got a thing for those baby shrimp you buy in a can.  There used to be large goldfish in there.  But he ate them all.  The whole reason that the pond had to be re-dug was because eating fish that rivaled him in mass made him get huge.

Now he occupies an amount of space half the size of a college dorm room, including a large portion of garden and the entire pond.  Attempts to introduce more fish to the pond result in a bigger and fatter turtle.  If my mother approaches, he comes to her, expecting food.  I’ve fed him enough that he comes over to me like a puppy for treats.  Goldfish crackers, pieces of cheese, Ritz crackers — he’ll eat anything I give him.  He looks at me with eagerness, circles his big sunning rock and thrusts his head out for morsels.

He’s growing all the time, it seems to me.  I imagine that the neighborhood children near my parents’ house are going to start circulating rumors about that crazy turtle, which resembles some sort of scary croc sometimes.

“Did you know that the Elm Avenue Killer Turtle ate Timmy’s little brother?  He went in after his Wiffle ball, and no one ever saw him again.”

“That scary Polish lady was out riding that turtle one day, and it had little Bobby’s half-eaten shoe coming out of its mouth!”

I can see it now.