Milton the Furry Turtle

This is a departure from my regular thinking-man's existential blog. This is just a story that I wanted to write just for the kiddos out there. For the people with kids. For the kids who are wondering who they want to be. For the kids wondering who they are...

Milton the Furry Turtle

Copyright 3/9/2016

Milton was a turtle. As turtles go, he wasn’t all that extraordinary. He had a shell and a tail, scaly skin, and all of the other things that you would think of when you thought of a turtle. But what you couldn’t see, deep in his heart, was a dream.

The dream was the same one he’d had from the moment he hatched and stepped foot into the world. No, it wasn’t to be fast. That would be silly! Who has ever heard of a fast turtle? It wasn’t to be tall. Why, that’s just as absurd.

No. Milton had a dream that was bigger than all of those things! In fact it was bigger than all of the dreams any other animals had ever had if you mashed them all together.

Milton wanted fur.

Every day, Milton would shuffle down to the pond and gaze at himself in the water. He sometimes had to think very hard about how he thought he should look. Without fail, though, he would see himself as he truly wanted to be.

He imagined all varieties of fur. He saw himself with the long mane of the horse, or the shaggy coat of the coyote. Sometimes it was the finer fur of the squirrel, or even the coarse hairs of the skunk with their racing stripes.

And he was beautiful! At least to himself he was. To the other animals, he simply looked as an ordinary turtle should look.

One day, as he stood by the pond enjoying the image of his magnificent mane, his friend Waldorf the Chipmunk happened by.

“Mornin’ Milt,” Waldorf chittered.

“Heya, Wally,” Milton replied.

“Whatcha doin’,” Waldorf asked.

“Just lookin’ at me,” he replied.

“Why?”

“Just tryin’ to see what’s missin’,” Milton explained. “Ever feel like you’re missin’ somthin’?”

“Acorns, mostly. That's what my mama says,” Waldorf shrugged. “She always says, ‘Waldorf, you’re a few acorns short of an oak tree.’ But I didn't know I was missin’ any acorns.”

“I don’t think that’s what she means, Wally,” Milton smiled.

“Well, whadya mean, Milt? What are you missing?”

“Fur.”

Waldorf rolled in the dirt clutching at his belly and laughing. Milton’s heart sank. “You can’t have fur, silly! Everyone knows that turtles don’t have fur!” Waldorf exclaimed between giggles.

“Just because you’ve never seen one doesn’t mean that I can’t! I can be anything I want, and I want to be furry!” Milton said with every ounce of courage he could muster.

“Oh, Milt. I’ve never seen a duck hoot like the owl either, and I know I never will. It’s just the way it is.” Waldorf tried to sound comforting, but it wasn’t helping Milton. “Ducks don’t hoot, chipmunks don’t lay eggs, and turtles don’t have fur, my friend.”

Waldorf rubbed Milton's shell and hopped off into the tall grass. Milton knew that Waldorf was right, of course. No turtle in the history of turtles had ever had fur. He also knew that in his heart, he was supposed to be the first.

Milton thought of one last place to go. His mama... She always knew just how to fix everything.

When he got to her home, she put a plate of cookies in front of him, just as she always did when she was sad. "What has my baby boy so inside out?" she asked.

"Mama, I don't know how to say this and I don't want you to be disappointed," Milton started. 

"Milton," Mama said, "you could never disappoint me."

"I'm supposed to be furry..." Milton looked at her from the corner of his eye, trying to see her reaction. Mama just pursed her lips and sat down next to him.

"Son, you know there's never been a furry turtle in these woods, right?" Mama asked.

"Yes'm," he replied.

"You know that you were not hatched with that future in mind, right?" she asked.

"Yes'm. Are you disappointed?" Milton wondered.

"Not in you my dear. Not in you," Mama assured. Milton finally turned his head to see his mother's worried face. "I'm disappointed that you will have a difficult road ahead of you. I'm disappointed that this unexpected path in front of you will have struggles that will be yours alone to overcome. No parent wants that for their child."

"What will I do, Mama?" Milton asked.

"Your best, my love. You will do your best." Mama gave him another cookie and kissed him on the head.

“I gotta go, Mama,” Milton said, and started the long walk back to his burrow to think. It was a cozy little burrow dug into the side of a hill under an old log that was covered in moss. It was also where he got his best ideas.

All day and all night, Milton sat in his burrow and pondered his problem. How does a turtle get fur? Of course, he had many ideas, but none of them seemed to work.

He tried pushing hair out of his body from the inside. He pushed with all his might, but only got strange noises coming from his tail.

He tried to walk through the brambles hoping the coyote fur stuck to them would in turn stick to him, but it simply didn’t work. In fact, the brambles slipped over his shell as if he weren’t even there.

He tried borrowing fur from the dens of the field mice, though they said he was crazy. Again, the fur slid off his shell without so much as a hit of taking root.

He thought rolling in mud may help the fur stick, but the only thing that got stuck was him. He lay there a good long time before Waldorf found him and flipped him over.

Word had begun to spread in the woods about what Milton meant to do, and time after time, animals would stop to chuckle and point at the crazy little turtle that wanted fur. Milton thought very long and very hard and soon decided to give up. The other animals were right, after all. Turtles weren’t supposed to have fur.

So Milton went back to his burrow and was very sad. Even the sky had turned sad. As the rain began to fall and thunder crash, Milton took comfort in thinking the sky was as sad as he.

All night it rained, pouring great gouts of water into the woods. Though Milton’s burrow was in the side of a hill and under his log, the ground still became muddy and soft.

Even so, Milton was able to fall asleep. All night the thunder crashed and the rain poured down. Milton’s dreams were frightful. He worried that he may never get his fur, no matter how hard he wished or knew it was meant to be.

Morning finally came and the sun peeked through the clouds. Milton crawled out of his burrow under the mossy log. He stretched his little turtle legs and was again determined to figure out a way to get his fur. As he basked in the warmth of the sun for a moment, he felt a cold, wet plop on the back of his shell. He turned his head to look and saw that the moss growing on his log had slid off onto his back in a thick blanket of green.

“Hmmph,” he groused to himself. “Now I’m covered in moss!”

He tried to shake his shell to remove it, but the sun quickly dried the roots of the moss to his shell. He tried to scrape it off on the underside of the log, but he just couldn’t reach. Frustrated and at his wit’s end, he flopped down in a puddle to pout.

“Great!” Milton said. “Not only do I have no fur, but now I’m covered in moss!”

It was then that Waldorf came along.

“Hiya, Milt!” he chirped.

“Hey, Wally”, Milton sighed.

“What’s wrong, Milt?” Waldorf said with concern.

“As you might have noticed, I still have no fur and I’m now covered in moss”, Milton pointed out.

Waldorf looked over Milton’s shell and saw that the moss had in fact become stuck on his shell. But it was still healthy and green. And on top of that, it had a single daffodil growing from the middle.

“Ya know, Milt, the moss kinda looks like fur!” Waldorf said in surprise.

“It does?” Milton exlaimed.

“Yeah,” Waldorf said, “green, but still furry! And I can promise you that no other animal in the woods has fur like this! Heck, you’re even growing a flower!”

Milton looked again and he finally saw it! It did look like fur! He turned this way and that way letting the dew catch the sunlight. His fur was healthy and bright, reflecting the light so beautifully that you could even see rainbows in the water droplets.

Milton was so proud that he strutted through the woods as best a turtle can. The other animals called out to him “Hey Milton, nice ’fur’!”, trying to make a joke of it. But he would just reply, “I bet you can’t grow fur like mine!” And he was right.

His fur was unique, unlike any other animal in the forest. It took time for them to see Milton as he saw himself, but soon enough they recognized him as the ‘furry’ turtle. Milton had always known what he was supposed to be, and though it wasn’t what others expected when he told them who he was, he believed in himself long enough that others finally saw him as the beautiful Milton he had always been.

Milton had finally found himself. Though it was hidden behind the turtle he had always been, and looked nothing like what the other animals thought it should look like, he had at last convinced everyone that he was the furriest turtle they would ever see and just as furry as he had ever hoped to be.

The end.