Sunday, October 11, 2009

Hooray For The Good Guy!

It's pretty cool when you get to witness a random act of kindness firsthand. This morning as I was driving to work, I saw an oncoming car in the distance pull over off the road. As I got closer I could see a small dark lump in the middle of the road. Turns out it was a gopher tortoise--a threatened species in Florida. It was trying to cross four lanes of a moderately well traveled road. The guy who pulled his car over got out and picked the tortoise up just before two cars would have come up on it in that lane and as I was passing by in the opposite lane. In my rearview mirror I saw the guy carrying the tortoise safely to the grass and woods on the other side.

An interesting side note about the "threatened" status of gopher tortoises: When we bought our current house three years ago, the sellers were required by law to disclose that there are two gopher tortoises living on the property! We still catch glimpses of them once in awhile--usually one or the other, but not both at once--wandering around the yard in the middle of the day, eating grass. They'll probably be around long after we're gone--gopher tortoises live upwards of 100 years!
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