Bulky thick inelegant legs ending in frightening claws. Absurd useless tails. Toothless gaping mouths. Prominent nostrils, wrongly placed. Horrid corrugated necks. No ears, none at all. Foolish, fatuous expression. The only part of the turtle that might be considered attractive is the carapace (when it's not coated with slimy vegetation or studded with leeches), but in the entire history of the planet, no turtle has ever been able to admire its own integument.
Imagine being reincarnated as a creature so imperfectly designed that it can't regain its legs when tipped onto its back. If I were a turtle, I would hate that. Legs flailing in the air. Undignified. Double yeesh.
Plus, many turtles eat worms.
Moreover, if I or someone dear to me were to become a turtle -- it's going to be a long haul, reincarnation-wise. Let's say, for example, that you were to be born again as a dung beetle -- why, you would endure a very unsavory couple of months, but then -- on you would go to the next life. Once reincarnated as a turtle, however, you're liable to be stuck in that ungainly shell for a century. And worse still -- some turtles "brumate" for half their lives. That's a heck of a lot of time to spend in a state of suspended animation. In addition -- and this is rather shocking -- some turtles extract oxygen from water through their "cloaca." I can't imagine how they do that, and, frankly, "'twere to consider too curiously to consider so." Not to mention turtle sex. Do turtles cuddle or snuggle? It must be quite an accomplishment to work around those massive clanking shells.
So no turtle reincarnation for me. But to tell truth, I find reincarnation itself, like most religious or quasi-religious ideas, utterly baffling. I presume it works something like this. I die, my soul is released from my corpse and immediately enters into a new body -- in this case a newly fertilized turtle egg. (I have no idea how this process works -- but let's all agree that it does). Immediately, there's a glitch. Turtle gender is not determined in the usual way, by XX and XY genes. Turtle gender is a consequence of the temperature at which the embryos develop inside the eggshell. Warm, male; cool, female (or vice versa in some species). What this means is that if my soul was infused or assimilated or injected into a turtle egg, it would not be immediately known whether I was going to be a boy turtle or a girl turtle. I don't really care, frankly; there's not much advantage to being one or the other. Turtles are not particularly sexually dimorphic and both genders are equally hideous. But I would like to know right away and not have to wait on some quirk of the weather.
Reincarnation puzzles me for still another reason. How can I be sure that I haven't already been reincarnated? Perhaps I was a turtle (or an albatross) in a past life. I don't remember being other than I am, but how can I be certain?
Or, to switch points of view, perhaps one of the turtles pictured above was once, let us imagine, Ragnar Naess (1900-1972), a bachelor sorghum farmer from O'Neill, Nebraska. Or even one of my less brainy former colleagues. How could we determine it; how could the turtle know it? If it's undeterminable, why does it matter?
Gosh, reincarnation is a tough nut to crack.
[December 15, 2022. Pearl Maneli writes: "I believe current reincarnation theory explains that your soul wouldn't transmigrate into a turtle at the moment of conception; it would do so only when the turtle hatches from the egg. So you can let your mind rest easy on the question of your turtle gender."]
[December 16. Vivian de St. Vrain responds: "Thanks, Pearl. I am much relieved"]
.....👀...👀.....🌎
🐢
To be reincarnated as a turtle is no small thing or laughable thing. It's the turtle that carries us across the cosmic ocean . To be chosen to reincarnate as a turtle is the first step to someday becoming a grand island turtle carrying seeds of the future.
Posted by: Turtle King Terrapin | January 13, 2023 at 02:15 PM
Wasn't it Ogden Nash who wrote
I think it clever
Of the turtle
Amidst such plates
To be so fertile.
Posted by: Don Z. Block | December 24, 2022 at 05:51 PM