Work In Progress

Driving home around 3:30 Tuesday morning after reporting on a wreck I saw the blue lights of a police car flashing before me on South New Hope Road, near the location of  Bethlehem Church’s entranceway.

I figured it was a license check. I was sober so I was safe. I also had my license on me.

But instead of a license check, it was a single police officer standing outside his car headed north as I traveled south. Instead of looking for drunken drivers, he had turned on his lights to help a little turtle - a box turtle, I guess - cross the road.

There was no other traffic on the road, so the officer wasn’t blocking passers-by with this small act of kindness. I didn’t ask his name, and didn’t recognize him, but he also said he was on his way home when he saw the turtle crossing the street.

He didn’t want anyone to hit the turtle, so he had apparently turned around his patrol car and stood watch in the light morning rain as the turtle slowly inched across two lanes of traffic.

He might be embarrassed if anyone knew what he did, but it’s nice to know that Gastonia has police officers nice enough to even help out turtles when they probably just wanted to head home and go to sleep.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.