Goines On: Housing development

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Goines took his morning walk into the adjacent housing development to the south, where Mrs. Goines loved to walk because of its openness and the interest of its road paving and housing construction. Its clubhouse and pool were the first construction site he came to, only a couple of hundred yards in. The building looked almost finished, though only a small fraction of the development’s projected 400+ dwellings had been constructed and moved into. Perhaps the first home-buyers had been promised a clubhouse soon?
    He took the road to the left of the clubhouse’s lot to the nearest cross street that had a few occupied houses, turned right there, traversed the whole street, and turned right to head back around to the clubhouse and his own community beyond.

    What was that lying in the street in front of the clubhouse? Goines thought it could be crumpled cardboard or someone’s shirt. Within 20 feet, Goines jerked his head up at the sight of the biggest turtle he had ever seen outside a zoo or a nature program on TV. It wasn’t moving. Was it dead? Its head pointed to the left, roughly toward where Goines had entered the development. The turtle’s thick left legs stuck out from its dark, dirty, weathered shell; its tail lay flat on the pavement; its right legs were underneath its shell. Goines moved around to the turtle’s head and was relieved to find its eyes open, looking at him, he guessed, if they could still see anything. The turtle appeared to be famished.
    Goines feared that the middle of this fairly wide road was not a safe place for any animal to be lying in, but he was relieved somewhat by the thought that the turtle was fortunate that there was little traffic beyond construction vehicles and gawkers. Goines told the turtle to hold on, he was going for help, and he hurried home to tell Mrs. Goines and figure out what to do. Vaguely, he was thinking they’d come back to lift the creature into the back of their station wagon – into Ziggy’s spot when they took him somewhere.
    Mrs. Goines immediately vetoed their collecting the turtle themselves. They didn’t know what diseases it might have, et cetera, et cetera. She was already googling for information and caveats.
    Beside himself with anxiety, Goines went to the bedroom and called the animal hospital less than a mile away. Whoever answered said to give her a minute, and she came back with a telephone number she said to call, someplace called CLAWS. CLAWS’ phone answered with the message that all callers must leave a message; someone would get back in minutes. What is your name, what county are you in, what species are you calling about, what is your telephone number? What species? Goines knew only that it was a very big turtle.
    In about two minutes, a woman named Beth called back and gave Goines the number of a volunteer named George. He would either help Goines or give him the number of someone else who was available.
    George was available. Where was the turtle? Goines told him, relieved that help had been so close to hand. He breathed easier and started to relax back into his usual routine of cooling off after a hot walk and returning to the kitchen to clean up after breakfast. He looked up CLAWS later and found out it was a nonprofit organization that helps wild and exotic animals, even rescuing and rehabilitating animals in need. It was associated with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission, whose website listed all of the registered volunteer animal rehabilitators in the state, by county.

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