Swim

My little town has a beautiful lake where I can swim. Now, before you say anything, I already know that a lot of people don’t like lake swimming. Compare it to a pool. You know a pool is clean – it has that chlorine antiseptic smell which tells you that all germs, bacteria, and other unseen critters are dead, dead, dead. You can see to the bottom. After you swim in a pool your hair and body waft the bleachy aroma for the rest of the day. If you wear the wrong kind of swim suit, its color fades over time and it gets all stretched out. If you are a lap swimmer you need to get to the pool when it is not too busy so you can stake out your lane. There is a real structure to it.

Lake swimming is different. You know there are all kinds of critters there, and they are live, live, live. Take the frogs. They are hanging out in the grasses at the far edge, croaking and hopping, and metamorphosizing. They stick to themselves. 

Then there are the fishies. They come in different sizes and tend to stay near the bottom. They cruise together, first straight, then they hang a sharp right, then they go straight again for a while, then a left, all in unison as though they are following the same GPS. They are very clever.

And what would a lake be without turtles? There are a lot of them this year, floating at the top of the water, paddling on down, and climbing back out to sun on logs from time to time when conditions are just right.

And then there is the snapping turtle. Now, I was raised during a time when our parents bought us tiny turtles as pets, and we kept them in a little clear container with a plastic palm tree. Turtles were small and harmless. And cute! Sure, I’ve seen other types since then, but I always thought the big boys were in the Galapagos Islands or in some other place far, far away. Boy was I wrong.

Our lake has at least one snapping turtle that I have seen on several occasions. Or maybe there are two that I have seen once or twice each. Or three that I have only seen once each. Hard to say. Anyway, this/these guy(s) are more than a foot (that is, more than twelve inches) wide with a head the size of my fist and giant claws the size of seriousness. They mean business. And guess what, a while ago, one of them bit a human person. Yikes!

So here I am in the lake, where the water is dark, and as I swim I notice plunks and splashes made by unidentified organisms plopping into the lake from the shore. I imagine that Mr. Snapper Man has eyed me and is moving in for the prey. I tell myself that I am bigger. I tell myself that and that my moving and splashing will discourage him from coming closer. I tell myself that if he is hungry, there are a lot of other far more tasty options for him to munch on. I can’t help it, but the theme song from Jaws pounds in my head. 

Soon my swimming is finished, and my unbroken flesh and I go back to the beach to dry off. 

Just another Brush With Danger in my little town.