12.18 Favorite Memories - Jessica and the Wildlife

Bestest Friend and I are in the middle of a blog project. Each day of the month we will post a picture on a pre-determined theme and write a little something about it. The theme for the eighteenth day of each month is "Favorite Memories."
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When I was a teenager, my parents would ship me off to my mother's family for a month during the summer. At first I sort of resented that my parents didn't want me around, but soon enough I grew to love it, especially since it meant I could see my favorite cousin, a girl about my own age who was Bolder, Louder, and Awesomer than I could ever be.

She was also a lot more an outdoors oriented person than I was or will ever be. She'd randomly take me for strolls through wooded areas, go off the paths*, and inevitably we'd get lost. She loved animals and would always find camouflaged creatures in a heartbeat. She was a seasoned birder and while I still don't know a starling from a swallow, she was giving me scientific names for birds when we were in eighth grade.

So, while I was strolling on the walking trail by my house today, I kept imagining all the living creatures Jess would be able to see that I could not see. Beyond the ground squirrels, the godforsaken rabbits, the angry geese, and the red-winged blackbirds, what would see have been able to point out to me?

And then I stumbled upon this RIGHT ON THE TRAIL.

And, while I wish she could have been there to tell me exactly what kind of turtle it was (along with age, sex, and danger of biting me), I just danced a bit and cooed at it from afar, knowing that if I've learned anything else from my cousin, it's that sometimes the best things to see are right in front of you.

*She recently went out on a date with some guy she met on a dating site and they went for a walk around a pond/lake/water feature of some sort. Jess saw a giant turtle under a bridge and called for her date to crawl under the bridge and look at the turtle with her and he was utterly horrified. "I thought we were going for a walk. But you keep stopping every thirty seconds to look at something."  As Jess was relaying this story to me on the phone, I kept laughing because it's so true. Going for a walk with her is like walking with a toddler.

They did not go out on a second date.
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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about the theme of the day, check out her blog, Too Legit to Quit.