I have never considered a turtle's point of view before. I stop on the highway and remove them from the asphalt and harm's way, but I've never asked myself or them why they are crossing the road in the first place. If I could talk to them they might just ask me some of the questions posed like, why do humans accumulate things? Why do humans experience pain and conflict when raising their young? Why do humans spend so much time and so many resources flinging themselves into space when there are unexplored vistas right here? Do we really expect to find life more alien to humans than those non-human life forms we have already discounted here on earth? What if it is not that we can't communicate with them, but that they haven't gotten through to us yet?

I think that this book makes a common mistake, chastising humans for acting human, and berating us for living our lives as humans do. But the tenor here is much softer than I am used to. The questions come with less angst and more curiosity, a fact-finding mission to add pieces to a puzzle instead of preaching divine retribution and ecological disaster. This book held my interest to the end as it is a well thought-out and entertaining soliloquy.

It turns out that turtles are not all eating, swimming and sleeping. They are deep thinkers and philosophers as well. The next time I stop on the highway to save one I will ask it whether it was trying to cross the road or attract our attention. Am I really saving it or am I just pushing it a little bit farther away?