First of all, hello everyone, I am glad to be back. The COVID CONSPIRACIES book is with the publisher and I have a respite before the medical professionals anthology from rural COVID experiences goes off in October.

So I come up for air and realize my house is a tip and the garden doesn’t so much look like we planted things as tripped with a tray of seeds. There’s a cat in here I don’t recognize and two days ago my husband (at least, he said he was; I hadn’t seen him in awhile and wasn’t sure) came in holding up a bleeding hand.

“A turtle bit me,” he said.

Okay…….

It turns out, he was sitting in his front porch man-cave where he hangs out to watch the world pass by and talk to the neighbors, and, well, a turtle crossed the road. Slowly. Too slowly for my animal-loving husband, who went out to help the little creature along his or her way.

In gratitude for which, the turtle turned its long neck around over its shell and took a triangular chunk out of the fleshy part of Jack’s palm. The police sketch artist who worked with Jack after the incident suggests it mighta been a snapper.

My husband did not let go and neither did the turtle, until both were safely across the street. When Jack came in bleeding, I did what any good wife would do: took a photo for Facebook, and then spread the wound with peroxide followed by antibiotic cream. Then I got on the horn to a doctor friend. Once she stopped laughing, she said, yes, maybe Jack should get a tetanus shot as turtles, ehm, carry things.

Our good Dr. Ashley Blevins called in a shot, and after a wee bit of fankle with the pharmacy –“No, really a turtle, yes, today, sure we can come down there after supper”–we both got tetanus shots. It was a couples thing, like a pandemic date.

This eased my mind, because of all that I wasn’t prepared to deal with, trying to get the book in, my husband dying of a turtle bite during a global health crisis wasn’t on the list. Can you imagine trying to write that obituary? People would try so hard to be respectful of my loss, but end up giggling. “A turtle? Really? Did anyone see the rabbit?” “Why did the turtle cross the road, anyway?” Etc.

Thanks to a couple of doctor pals and our friendly neighborhood pharmacist (who did snort behind his mask but kept the laughter in) all is well at Chez JacknWendy. For the next ten years, because that’s how long tetanus shots last. Come at us, turtles.