After hearing all the talk about how much money oil companies make, and believing that a free and open economy is good, I am taking personal steps to reduce the demand for oil. I fully understand that my actions are going to have little effect on gas prices, but at least it should decrease the amount that I put in my tank.

I do believe that economics is a science and that it is constantly changing as trends change. Simple, basic principles tell us about supply and demand. In order for gas price to go down, there must be an increase in supply or a decrease in demand. However, I don’t think an increase in supply will do anything because demand is so darn high. Honestly, if gas was $6 a gallon, and you needed gas to get to work you’d pay it. You don’t have a choice.

You can choose to decrease your driving, go out less, run all your errands at once, etc. You can downsize your car, syphon gas from a neighbor, car pool.

I live 3.6 miles from work. That isn’t that much. So my work commute isn’t exactly breaking the bank in terms of gas. However, because I live 3.6 miles form work I usually come home for lunch, 7.2 miles, then back to work - 10.8 miles, then home again 14.4 miles. That car is also the one we use for all our running. We take it to dinner, to run to the store, it feeds my starbucks addiction. So, I bought a bike, not a motorcycle, a bicycle. Tonight I did a test run to see how bad it will be (on my end of town it is all hills). I rode 4 miles, up and downhills in 18 minutes. So, it looks like it’ll take me about 10 minutes longer to ride a bike instead of drive. I’ll also be getting some good exercise - 7 1/2 miles a day on a bike. Estimated time for the bike to pay for itself - 5 weeks. So, weather permitting, I’ll be rolling a Schwinn to work.

On friday as I was finishing up work around 5:30 I get a phone call from Melody who had just made it home. She said to me, “There is a turtle in the house”. My immediate response was, “There’s a turtle in the house?!”.Because a turtle for some reason reminds Mel of her fear of snakes she wouldn’t touch it.

So I left the office and headed home to find a box turtle hanging out by the dog food. I picked up my new friend and carried him or her down to the end of the road and released the turtle into a field. With the emergency avoided comes the next question. How does a turtle get in someone’s house?

I’m sure it came in through the doggy door, but how. It’s safe to say that unless that turtle was Leonardo, there was no way it was leaping up 8-10 inches, after climbing 4 steps, to enter a doggy door through the flap.Now we had a bird in our house once, hiding out beneath a buffet type of chest in our dining room. I don’t know how it got in either. In college, I distinctly remember an experience with a bat in our house and a scene from the Great Outdoors that proceeded to happen. The bird was discovered because the dogs were going crazy trying to get at something underneath the buffet. When I looked I couldn’t believe it was a bird. My only guess is that Harley, or one of the dogs happened to catch this bird and bring it in. It then fled to that spot to stay safe. I was able to get the bird out safely and it flew away.

As of right now I can only imagine two scenarios for the turtle. The first one involves a kid in the neighborhood playing a joke and coming into my fenced backyard to place a turtle through my dog door. This takes some guts because I have 3 dogs, 2 of which are large breeds. Mac is still a puppy, but even still he’s a 65 pound boxer. Vesta on the other hand is an American Bulldog, tips the scales at around 85 pounds, and has a thicker chest and larger head than I have. Though I don’t think either of them would hurt anyone, Vesta by nature is somewhat territorial.

This leads us to the probable scenario. A turtle somehow makes it from the field three houses down or the woods 1/2 mile down the road into my backyard. Mac or Vesta find Mr. Turtle and bring him inside the house in order to throw a party.