So Frnywys has been livelier than usual. Last weekend I got involved in a strange incident, which is saying something as strange incidents in Frynwys often equate to really trivial things. However this time it was truly strange, as it involved a terrapin.
Frynwys has a small area of wild land at the bottom of the village. It's not enough to warrant reserve status, but it's home to some wildlife including a pair of buzzards which nest in the nearby trees, fish, frogs and the occasional heron. Given this is fairly typical fauna to find in an area like this, you can imagine my confusion when I spotted a terrapin in the pond.
It was swimming in amongst reeds and pondweed, and when I saw frogspawn near the bank I wondered momentarily if the terrapin had been attracted to the pond by the prospect of a feast. Whatever frogs were in the pond at the time disappeared when I approached but the terrapin stayed. In fact it swam up to me and poked its tiny head out of the water to stare at me. I asked it (which seems a self-defeating exercise) what it was doing in the pond, and then it dived and its brown shell blended in with the muddy water.
After a few minutes of deliberation, I came to the obvious conclusion that someone had released the terrapin into the pond. It wouldn't be the first time; there was a previous incident where someone had released fish into the pond which proceeded to consume the tadpoles, but this was something else. The fact that the reptile had approached me indicated that it was familiar with people, but there wasn't a lot I could do. I thought about trying to capture it so that I could take it home and look after it until someone came to collect it, but I had nothing on me useful to catching terrapins.
So I left. When I got home I told my father about it, and we realised that if we left the terrapin in the pond it could potentially freeze. We're not quite out of winter yet, and I was not confident about the cold-blooded animal's chances when the temperature dropped. With this in mind, we grabbed a bucket and a long pole and headed back to the pond. Just as we were about to reach it, we spotted three teenagers, equipped with small fishing nets and a box, coming the other way. When they saw us they attempted to move out of sight, but we approached and asked if they had caught a terrapin. They told us that they had, albeit it somewhat tentatively, and then we explained the situation. It turned out they had the terrapin in the box and were taking it back to its home; one of the houses in the street behind the forest. Satisfied that the matter was resolved we left.
Is there a moral to this story? Not from a poet's point of view maybe. We deduced afterwards that the terrapin had been released into the pond during the day, if not by the teenagers than by one of their relatives, and they had set out to retrieve it when they returned home after school. I suspect that the teenagers had tried to hide from us because they thought we might have been nature reserve officials. The people in charge of looking after the wild land had acted when fish were released into the pond, putting up a sign explaining the damage and asking for the perpetrator to contact them. Maybe the teenagers were worried about reprisals from wildlife officials and decided to remove the terrapin before any lasting damage was done.
All this resulted in was just an unusual break from the daily pattern of life here in Frynwys. From a purely practical standpoint, the lesson to take away from this strange incident is obvious. Don't release pets into the wild. Not just terrapins, but any domestic animal really. Fortunately, the frogs didn't appear to notice, and the pond can go on being undisturbed. At least until a heron shows up looking for a free lunch.
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