One Friday afternoon in early 2008, I picked little Nhu up at Magnolia Public School in my car, even though I live a block away from the school, because I was taking her to Camden County Library.
As we drove down Warwick Road past our house, little Nhu shouted, "MR. PETER! MR. PETER! THERE'S A TURTLE WALKING ON THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF YOUR WARWICK ROAD DOOR!"
I drove around the block and parked next to my house, and ran around to the front door of my house with little Nhu. Sure enough, there on the sidewalk between my front door and the Warwick Road sidewalk was a great, big, bright Eastern Box Turtle, Terrapene carolina carolina under the binomial nomenclature system of genus, species and subspecies classification ...
"Mr. Peter," little Nhu said to me with a serious face, "This is very bad! The turtle is walking away from your house! In Vietnam that means that you are about to have very bad luck!"
I did not even know that we had turtles, there on busy Warwick Road. Where had the animal come from? In any event, little Nhu and I took the turtle around to the other side of the house and released it into my wife Rise`'s garden. To my surprise, the turtle immediately began to dig into the ground, as though to construct a new dwelling for itself.
Eminently satisfied that we had done our good deed for Nature, little Nhu asked if I could let her into her house so that she could change into more comfortable clothes for our anticipated trip to the library. So, we went next door, and while I waited in the living room, little Nhu went back to her bedroom and changed. Nhu yelled to me from her bedroom, as she changed, "I WONDER WHAT BAD LUCK YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE, BECAUSE THAT TURTLE WAS WALKING AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE, MR. PETER!"
At that moment, as though on cue, there was a knock at little Nhu's front door. It was my oldest son Josh.
"Dad," Josh asked, "Didn't you feel the ground shaking or hear the big bang?"
"No, Josh," I said, "I heard nothing."
"Where's Lesle, Dad? You two have to come to our house immediately!"
"She's in her bedroom changing her clothes, Josh. What's up?" I asked, getting worried.
"Dad," Josh explained, "The giant oak tree in front of our house just split in half, and the half closest to our house just fell and slammed against the front of the house and damaged it, all over the place. It's really bad! Lesle! Hurry up and change so that Dad can come home!"
Little Nhu came out, her clothes changed, but carrying her socks and sneakers. "Well," little Nhu said, "There it is, Mr. Peter! Your bad luck!" She pulled on her socks and sneakers and we ran over to my house.
The tree had split down the center, vertically, and the half which had fallen had smashed the front of our house at several places. The half which had not yet fallen was leaning precariously over the rancher of our neighbor on Warwick Road, Barbara Cheeseman, and would clearly crush her house in short order.
I went over to Mrs. Cheeseman's house, and discovered that she already had a argument in her holster to avoid paying for half of the cost of tree removal. "You'd better pay to have your tree removed, Peter Dawson, before it crushes my house, or I'll have a lawyer sue you!"
I answered, "Barbara, how are you doing? Listen, Barbara, the trunk of that tree lies dead center on the border between our properties. The half of it which had been on our side of the border is now leaning against the front of my house. The half of it which is on your side of the property hasn't moved, but it's obviously going to fall onto your house and crush it very shortly. A little breeze, or a light rain adding a few thousand pounds of water weight to the tree, will bring it down."
"NO!" Barbara insisted angrily, "THE TREE IS 100% ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BORDER LINE BETWEEN OUR PROPERTIES! IT'S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!"
I answered, with kindness, "Listen Barbara, I'll tell you what. Of course, since I am a lawyer, I have several friends who are lawyers. Since you say that the tree is 100% on my side of the boundary line between our properties, if I have one of those lawyers draw up new deeds to your property and my property with a boundary line 100% on your side of the tree trunk, you'll sign it then, right? If you are correct, and the tree, right now, is 100% of my side of the boundary line, you won't lose anything, right? But if I'm right, I'm about to become the owner of additional several hundred square feet of your property, right?"
THIS "smoked-out" Barbara from her initial position immediately.
"But I can't AFFORD to pay for my half of the tree, Pete!" she pleaded, "I just don't have the money! Won't your insurance company cover it?"
I responded, "Insurance companies are hair-splitters, Barbara, especially since 9/11, the Enron Scandal, the Dot Com Scandal, Hurricane Katrina and losses on those things called 'derivatives.' The companies are going broke and looking for ways to avoid liability. Odds are that my insurance company is going to pay for only half of the cost of tree removal. And since no 'accident' has occurred involving your half of the tree, yet, your insurance company will probably respond by denying liability for any loss which you might have to suffer on collapse of your half of the tree, due to 'improper maintenance' -- NOT removing a damaged tree -- by you. Let me talk to Rise` and I'll get back to you."
My wife Rise` and I talked about it, and we decided to promise to Mrs. Cheeseman that we would cover the cost of removal of Mrs. Cheeseman's half of the tree, too, out-of-pocket.
No good deed goes unpunished. Our "reward" for our charity to Mrs. Cheeseman was that she stopped talking to us, so long as she lived next to us, I guessed because of anger that I called her bluff about not actually owning half of the tree. Bad luck from the turtle had struck again!
Was the turtle done with us, yet?
I told my family about the amazing coincidence of little Nhu's interpretation of the turtle's direction of walk, and the collapse of the tree a half hour later. "Probably," I suggested, "The turtle was living beneath the tree, and heard the tree begin to split in half, and was making his escape. But, still, little Nhu's guess was pretty amazing!"
We went out to the garden and looked for the turtle, as we waited outside for the tree surgeon, Cameron Lyon of Lyon & Son Tree Service, to come and give us an estimate for tree removal the next day.
The turtle was already hopelessly out of reach, having buried itself deep in our garden on the side of the house -- or so we thought.
That night, as we sat in our family room talking about the collapse, we heard a "klunk" in the dining room wall next to the garden where the turtle had dug in. Apparently, it was getting close to turtle hibernation time, and the turtle had somehow worked its way through an open section of the foundation underground up into the warmth of our dining room wall, near the forced-air heating conduit in the wall! We heard the damnable thing "klunking" in the wall a few times each day, all Winter long, as it changed position!
That was it; the turtle was through with us, right?
We aren't sure. The next day, Cameron Lyon came with his trucks to take down and haul away both sides of the giant oak tree ...
A few years later, in 2013, poor Cameron Lyon died in a fall from a tall tree being trimmed by his business in Haddonfield.
Our turtle "friend" returns to the wall every Winter, now, clunking its way up through the wall to hibernate.
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