Thursday, November 30, 2017
All the Difference in The World
Every Sunday morning I take a light jog around a park near
my home. There’s a lake located in one
corner of the park. Each time I jog by
this lake, I see the same elderly woman sitting at the water’s edge with a
small metal cage sitting beside her.
This past Sunday my curiosity got the best of me, so I
stopped jogging and walked over to her.
As I got closer, I realized that the metal cage was in fact a small
trap. There were three turtles,
unharmed, slowly walking around the base of the trap. She had a fourth turtle in her lap that she
was carefully scrubbing with a spongy brush.
“Hello,” I said. “I
see you here every Sunday morning. If
you don’t mind my nosiness, I’d love to know what you’re doing with these
turtles.”
She smiled. “I’m
cleaning off their shells,” she replied.
“Anything on a turtle’s shell, like algae or scum, reduces the turtle’s
ability to absorb heat and impedes its ability to swim. It can also corrode and weaken the shell over
time.”
“Wow! That’s really
nice of you!” I exclaimed.
She went on: “I spend a couple of hours each Sunday morning,
relaxing by this lake and helping these little guys out. It’s my own strange way of making a
difference.”
“But don’t most freshwater turtles live their whole lives
with algae and scum hanging from their shells?” I asked.
“Yep, sadly, they do,” she replied.
I scratched my head.
“Well then, don’t you think your time could be better spent? I mean, I think your efforts are kind and
all, but there are fresh water turtles living in lakes all around the
world. And 99% of these turtles don’t
have kind people like you to help them clean off their shells. So, no offense… but how exactly are your
localized efforts here truly making a difference?”
The woman giggled aloud.
She then looked down at the turtle in her lap, scrubbed off the last
piece of algae from its shell, and said, “Sweetie, if this little guy could
talk, he’d tell you I just made all the difference in the world.”
The moral: You can
change the world – maybe not all at once, but one person, one animal, and one
good deed at a time. Wake up every
morning and pretend like what you do makes a difference. It does.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment