Welcome
to DavidTarver.com
|
|
|
|
Don’t Mess With A Survivor Copyright 2003, W. David Tarver It was a balmy late summer afternoon in 1980. It was Saturday, and I was driving to my office at Bell Labs in Holmdel. I enjoyed going in on Saturday, because the pace was much more relaxed. During the week, Bell Labs Holmdel was a bustling corporate mini-city of 5000 people. On this Saturday in August, the place was peaceful and nearly deserted. I was looking forward to a leisurely afternoon fine-tuning my latest hardware and software designs. I turned left into Bell Labs from Crawford’s Corner road, passing the huge transistor-shaped water tower at the entrance. In the distance, the Bell Labs building loomed like a huge rectangular space ship. As I accelerated up the entrance, I noticed something that looked like a large turtle crossing the road up ahead. I slammed on the brakes and stopped right in the middle of the entrance and got out of the car to get a better look at this thing. It was a tortoise, a huge tortoise that must have been a yard in diameter. It was a pre-historic looking creature, and I couldn’t help but think that it was odd to see this creature from the past in the middle of this Bell Labs setting from the future. Mostly though, I was very curious about this thing, and I immediately had some thoughts about taking it home as a pet. I had owned some small turtles when I was a kid, but they were nothing like this huge creature. The tortoise had stopped right in the middle of the road, and I got out of the car to have a closer look. The shell was dark gray and quite weathered. The tortoise’s legs and head looked like tough, aged leather. I figured that this thing could have been a hundred years old. What a prize to take home! I bent over to have a closer look at my newest pet, and I started to reach out and touch the creature. Then I made what turned out to be fortuitous decision – I went to the car and got a softball bat out of the trunk to use as a probe. The bat had an aluminum shaft and a rubberized tip, so I could use it to prod the tortoise. My first thought was to turn the tortoise over so that I could see its ventral side, and so that I could get it into a compromising position from which I could pick it up and place it in the trunk of my car. I tried to slip the bat under one side of the tortoise’s shell, but the tortoise leaned to that side so that I could not get the bat under it. I was surprised by the strength of this animal, but I was not deterred. I went to the other side of the tortoise and attempted to slip the bat in again. Again, the tortoise leaned to that side, and I couldn’t get the bat under it. I was starting to see that this was not going to be easy. Then I had a brilliant idea, one worthy of a young Bell Labs engineer -- maybe if I probed the tortoise’s head, it would retract into its shell, and the tortoise wouldn’t see me trying to slip the bat underneath its side. I circled around to the front of the tortoise and used the bat to poke at its head. Wham! In the blink of an eye, the tortoise’s wrinkled head lunged at my aluminum softball bat. Its upper teeth sank into the black rubber tip, and its lower teeth clanged against aluminum. I was shocked by the instant, violent response of this seemingly peaceful creature. I never knew that tortoises were so violent. I never knew they had teeth! I was trembling with fear. After the attack, the tortoise just sat there waiting for my next move. My next move was to put the softball bat back into the trunk, get into the car, and slowly drive away, taking great care to give the tortoise a wide berth.. In the rear view mirror, I saw Mr. Tortoise Sir resume his slow trek across the Bell Labs entranceway, toward the grass that lay on the far side. I learned two important lessons on that sunny, late summer afternoon. Lesson 1: Don’t mess with a survivor. Lesson 2: If you do mess with a survivor, use a softball bat, not your bare hands. David Tarver Atlantic City, NJ October 21, 2003 |