Don't Mess Around With Mother Nature

    This phrase, "Don't Mess Around With Mother Nature". was associated with a TV commercial some years back, further back than my memory now, but it fit in with this weekend's project.

   Sitting on the porch yesterday morning, enjoying the cool air and breeze, we noticed a grayish object nestled down in the uncut grass beside the front turnaround.

   A turtle had wandered into the side yard and was working furiously. My nature loving wife speculated that she was digging a hole to use for an egg depository, and that seemed to fit her actions.

   She soon finished her project and left using the driveway in front of the house, working her way across the road and into the yard across the street. She was headed for the lake, but don't know her ultimate destination. Carolyn made the observation that she had done her duty and was off to somewhere else. Apparently, never to see the nest or hatchlings again.

   All the time she had been digging and laying, there were several crows standing around her area, watching. Perhaps they envisioned lunch whenever the female turtle left the nest.

   A couple of loud claps drove the crows away, and, after the turtled traveled on, we went out to inspect.

   Sure enough, there was the hole filled in. 

   We felt like the crows would remember the location, and had already determined what had been deposited there. We gave some thought to protecting the site and giving the eggs a chance to hatch in their time.

   Our plan was to put some sort of structure over the site, either anchoring it to the ground or putting a heavy rock on top to keep it from being moved aside.

  

   Let's see those pesky crows get in that!

   Next morning before breakfast, we went back to the porch and saw the result of our work.

   An upside down plastic container with no sign of the stone. No way the crows could have accomplished that job, but, we didn't count on the four legged night roamers. Racoons or something had somehow gotten the rock off the top and just took the container off the site.

   And, yes, they had cleaned out the hole and left the egg remnants scattered around the outside.

   Regardless of our efforts in the conservation field, the natural food chain had held up, and someone, or something, perhaps plural, was now napping on a full stomach.

   One of my kids, back when a small kiddo, had an expression:

   "I'm sad about that."

   The mother turtle had moved on and would never know what happened, so why was I so sad?

   Seems as though we took this happening as a major catastrophe. How about the plight of millions of people around the world who are hungry, hurting, marginalized, and lost? 

   Do we mourn over them?

   We know that God takes care of the birds of the air and flowers of the field. 

   We also know that, as Americans, we have so much. Do we mourn more over turtle eggs than human hearts and needs?

   Do I sit and feel sad, and look for a larger rock, or do I look for ways to help in the crises of people's lives around me?

   Please God help us...