Myrtle the Turtle gets her racing...lightning bolts?

Ever since she could remember, Myrtle had been different from all the other turtles. She didn't really like sand, for one thing, she absolutely hated sardines...she would much rather eat pizza! And she was always asking questions, the biggest of which was: Why are turtles so slow?

Then after asking that query in a plaintive, little-turtle voice, every single time, she would do her darnedest to dash out the door. To critters like slugs and nightcrawlers, the sight was pretty spectacular, but to the rest of the animal kingdom it just looked, well, slow. Not quite molasses in January, mind you, but certainly a far cry from kicking up dirt like a cottontail with size 15 feet, which is what Myrtle always envisioned herself doing when she tried to dash.

But she never gave up her dream.

As the years rolled by Myrtle grew bigger, smarter, more determined, but alas, no faster than any other turtle until one night, her whole universe was turned upside-down...literally!

It was the night of the full moon and the fireflies were out in such force that their brazen glow made it almost impossible to find shadows anywhere, but shadow was what Myrtle craved. You see, she had just been told for the 6th, (or was it 7th?), time that night that she had to give up her dream of running on the Quadrupede high school track team because a turtle could never compete against a Hare!

Finally, she found a grand pine tree, the tallest in the valley, where a deep patch of shadow cloaked the roots and needles in delicious blackness. As she settled herself in for a good old-fashioned sulk, she was startled by a raspy voice right behind her, coming from the tree! It said, "Climb to my top and point your tail at the North Star while singing the song that shall be given you, and the desire of your heart shall be granted."

Well, never had a turtle ever climbed a pine tree, but then again, never had a pine tree spoken to a turtle, so Myrtle reckoned that the two absurdities cancelled out, and so she started climbing up the pine tree. Luckily, right at the base there was a huge puddle of pine sap which she stepped in with all four feet, thus making her so sticky she could basically walk up the tree without even trying to hold on. A good thing too, because the only thing she had to hold on with was her beak!

Up and up she trudged, feet plodding in vertical drudgery because if you thought she was slow on flat ground, well, a 90 degree incline almost brought things to a standstill. But Myrtle was nothing if not persistent, so about the time the moon was getting ready to go to bed she made it to the very top of the tree, and a great gust of wind caught her, flipping her completely upside down! Turtles really cannot scream but they can squeak, and hers ranked among the Top Ten Squeaks of all turtledom. Once she calmed down, she realized it had all fallen into place: She was upside-down at the top of the pine tree, under the light of a full moon, and her tail was pointed at the North Star.

Perfection! Oh, wait, there was that bit about a song too, so she cleared her mind and just started singing. This is what she sang:
Lightning, lightning, can't strike me,
up on the top of a great pine tree.
Go ahead and try, you will see!"

Lightning under a clear sky made no sense but hey, neither did anything else about this whole adventure so she kept singing her song. After the first time through the skies clouded over; after the second time thunder started to rumble through the valley and Myrtle was getting a bit worried but she thought one more time, and with all her might she belted out:
Lightning, lightning, can't strike me,
up on the top of a great pine tree.
Go ahead and try, you will see!"

And she immediately got hit by a bolt of lightning right on the tip of her north-star pointing tail!
The heat melted her pitch-clad feet and gravity immediately asserted her authority over myrtle's shell and all the contents therein, so down the tree she went...branch, by branch by branch. "So this is what it feels like to go over Niagara Falls," she thought to herself, as she huddled inside her shell and waited for the horizontal to intersect with the vertical, which it then did with a mighty"Crump!"

As she stuck her head, tail, and four shaking appendages out from a well-used shell and looked up at the tree, she noticed something very strange...Her shell was glowing pink on one side and bright yellow on the other! Craning her head back as far as she could, she saw a pink lightning bolt on one side of her shell, and a yellow lightning bolt on the other.

"Cool," she thought, "I always wanted racing stripes but racing bolts are way more awesome!" And with that thought she did what she had been waiting her whole life to do...she Dashed!

And getting her racing lightning bolts was only the beginning of Myrtle's story:-) Because the Quadrupede track team tryouts were tomorrow!

To be continued...