While driving home one day, the traffic right ahead of me stopped suddenly. After a while, I saw an old woman kicking a large snapping turtle who was trying to cross the road. She was trying to help him move faster. He tried snapping at her foot.

I got out and ran over, picked up the turtle by the tail and carried him to the side of the road, letting him down in the underbrush. The old lady and her husband said, "oh, thank you! You did a good thing. Are you a turtle expert?"

"No," I said, "but I know how to pick them up."

There are several sad things about this vignette, but I'm most annoyed that anyone of such an advanced age would not know how to move a turtle across a road, or at least know that kicking is not appropriate. When people grow up without having a sense of basic decency toward our non-human kin, we've failed as a culture.