CURBSIDE ETIQUETTE

Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess



Below you will find links to dates when new entries are added. The stories will not necessarily be in chronological order, but rather as I remember them. I am dating them so that you can skip to new ones you haven't read since the last time you visited, and so that you are more easily able to find something you found humorous to share with others.
Travelin' Man


Once again, I'd like to show off the lack of quality given to my cell phone camera and my lack of ability to take pictures from a moving vehicle.

This is a fellow I've seen a couple of times on my current paper route, on Middle Road Extension. Each time, I've pushed him off of the road, hoping he doesn't get pancaked all over the road - he insists on crossing at a blind curve, the fool! Years ago my parents took me to Wildwood New Jersey for a summer vacation. It rained all week, with the exception of two hours Wednedsday afternoon. My dad sunburned the bottoms of his feet sleeping on the blanket while my mom and I dawned sporty sweatshirts over our bathing suits and waded knee deep into the ocean. After all, that's what we came for, right? All through New Jersey, there are signs along the road expressing how slippery the pavement is after hitting a school of turtles. We mentioned it to someone while we were there, and he said that they cross the road in hordes, and when people hit them, it creates the worst oil slick anyone could imagine. We found it humorous, but I've never forgotten about it, so to avoid an oil splotch on the road, I moved this guy aside. This little guy reminded me of another turtle I attempted to save a few years back.

I think I was on a newspaper route, because I seem to remember being on a road I travelled often. I found a slightly larger turtle in the middle of the road one afternoon, but when I picked him up by the edges of his shell near his back legs, his head must have popped an extra two inches out of his shell and he made every attempt to stretch his head around to snap at my fingers. His head swung from side to side to side with his jaws making a very, VERY loud snapping noise. I am glad I was smart enough to pick him up near his back legs, and not closer to his front legs where he might have been able to reach my fingers, I believe he would have really taken a chunk out of my hand! Ungreatful creature!

Almost two years later, a fellow newspaper carrier who delivered in a different area than where I had first seen the Travelin' Man, started to relate a very similar story. He, too, had seen a turtle spurting across the road, and stopped to give him a helping hand. The same thing happened - this guy's head stretched out of his shell and he tried and tried to snap at Charlie's fingers, but was unable to make contact. Charlie seemed more amazed than I was. What are the chances of two people, working for the same company, trying to rescue the same turtle a couple years apart and quite a few miles apart?

.... Pretty good, I'd say, wouldn't you?