“I’m here live on Tortuga Creek about two miles downstream from the train derailment and oil spill,” began Paula Periodista of Channel Seven News, “and as you can see this is a stream of oil now and will remain so until the railroad gets their act together and gets equipment out here to upright their overturned oil tankers. In the meantime all this black gold will continue to literally go down the drain.” Paula Periodista paused for effect, then with the camera still on her, she bent over and rubbed her two forefingers over a lily pad in the creek then displayed them for the camera. “As you can see the oil is covering all plant and animal life here as it goes on its rampaging path of unchecked death and destruction.”
Paula liked to dramatize her broadcasts a little bit.
“Now as to the good news. I’m here with Noah Gutermuth, age ten and his father. The two of them are here rescuing the poor animal victims of this devastating oil spill. Noah, what do you have in that box there that you’re holding?”
The cameraman focused on Noah. He held up a cardboard box about twelve inches square, the top open, and in it were three baby ducklings coated in oil. The cameraman shot, no he didn’t shoot them, he zoomed in on them for the TV audience at home.
“I have here some baby ducks I found,” answered the youth. “I found some dead ones too and I sacked them up to take home and bury.”
“What about the momma duck? Did you find Noah?”
“I found her dead over there on the other side of the creek covered with oil. It looked like a coon or coyote got her and tried to eat her but quit since she was so oily.”
“Oh how awful,” emoted Paula. “So what are you going to do with them now Noah?”
“Well since these babies are only a few days old, I’m going to take them home, wash them up with Dawn dishwashing liquid, keep them until they grow up, and then turn them loose back into the wild.”
“Well hopefully a new day will dawn for them then,” Paula said, having written that weak pun into the story. In fact, Paula had written all the lines for this broadcast, those for herself as well as those for the Gutermuths. The next one up per the script now was Bob Gutermuth, Noah’s father.
“We have here Bob Gutermuth Noah’s father,” began Paula, the camera focusing on him now. “You must be very proud of your son here for taking on this life saving project of his.”
“Yes I am Paula. My son loves animals. We live about two miles from here and have forty acres. Noah has his horse, a club calf every year for 4-H, his chickens, and rabbits too. Like I said, the boy just loves animals. When we heard about this derailment and oil spill we knew we just had to come over here and do something as quickly as possible to save God’s creatures.”
Paula sometimes waxed, well actually over waxed, poetic when writing her live newscasts. She always got God in there somewhere for all the Evangelicals here in Texas loved that.
“How noble of you. We certainly need more people like you two in this world to make things right.”
The camera now focused back on Paula as she turned back to Noah.
“Now Noah what do you have in that other box there at your feet?”
The cameraman zoomed in on the box.
“This is a turtle my father caught,” said Noah. “We found a lot of dead baby ones but this one was alive. He’s pretty dirty and we’re going to take him home, clean him up, and return him to his home here at the creek once the oil is gone.”
“Well he certainly is a big old fella isn’t he?” exclaimed Paula as the TV camera zoomed in on the hiddeous prehistoric looking reptilian creature. The turtle was about twelve inches long and weighed about twelve pounds. He was a big one as far as turtles go. “I understand that you’ve named him. Tell us what you’ve named him Noah.”
“I named him Don Tortuga since this is Tortuga Creek. Tortuga is turtle in Spanish and Don is mister so I decided to call him Don Tortuga, Mr. Turtle.”
“Well, aren’t you the clever young fellow?”
Paula had actually named him and written that into the script and told him to say that he named him not her.
Then suddenly Paula put her hand up to her right ear and adjusted her headset piece.
“Hold on folks,” she said.
Her hand came down from her earpiece.
“I have just been informed by Donna back at the station that the railroad has set up equipment downstream from here a couple of miles to suck the oil up out of the water. She also tells me that equipment is on the way to the wreck site to upright the spilled tankers. That’s certainly good news for Mother Nature now isn’t it.” Paula ad libbed this last line deciding to live dangerously for once in her life.
“We’ll that should do it from here for now. But we’ll be back and visit with Noah and his father with a follow up story next week sometime to see how these little cuties and Don Tortuga are doing.” Here the cameraman focused on the three baby ducks first and then Don Tortuga. “Back to you Donna.”
“That’s a wrap fellas,” barked Paula. “Load everything up and let’s blow this pop stand.”
She went over to and got in Mr. Gutermuth’s face. “I’ll need your phone number so I can call you when I’m ready to come back out and do the follow up story,” she squawked, handing him a pen and her empty cigarette package for him to write it down on. She lit up her last cigarette and not paying attention blew smoke in his face.
Mr. Gutermuth wrote it down and handed it back. She and her crew left without even a thank you to Noah and his father.
Noah and his father went home. Noah buried the dead ducklings in the backyard deep enough so the coons couldn’t dig them up and eat them and his father got the dish detergent, a bucket of warm water, and some paper towels. The two of them went to work cleaning up the baby Mallard ducklings. They were small fuzzy little things, about the size of a tennis ball, easy to clean, and they cleaned up in no time at all. Noah then put them in a chicken coop they weren’t using with a shallow pan of water for them to play in while his father went to town and got some duck feed at the local feed and seed store. When he got back Noah had put up a heat lamp to keep the ducklings warm at night, a tray feeder on the floor for the duck feed, and bedded the place down with fresh straw. The ducklings were now snuggly nestled in their new temporary happy home.
As to Don Tortuga, well that was a different matter altogether. He was going to have to live in the other half of the chicken coop until it was safe to release him back into the wild. The chicken coop consisted of two pens being seperated by chicken wire with a door between them. Don Tortuga was a snapping turtle and they had to handle him with care for if he bit you he could take your finger off. So they taped his mouth shut first before they began scrubbing him. Because of his reptilian scales and cragged shell it was hard to get all the oil off him. But after many tries it appeared they got the job done, so they quit. Noah got out his old plastic swimming pool from when he was a kid, yes it was a Mr. Turtle brand pool of course, put it on the floor on Don Tortuga’s side, filled it with water, built an earth ramp up to it, and put some rocks directly on the other side so Don Tortuga could easily get in and out. For turtle food at first they fed him some lettuce but since they knew he was a wild animal and that as such he ate other wild animals, they got some small minnows from a local bait shop and put them in the pool so that the Don could catch his own food as if he were still in the wild.
So everything was in place and everyone got settled in for the night. The ducklings cuddling together under the heat lamp and Don Tortuga sleeping on top of the rocks in his pool. Next morning Noah checked on them before he went to school and told his father everything was fine. Therefore his father didn’t bother checking things out and went off to work.
But things were not fine when Noah checked on them when he got home from school. Oh Don Tortuga was fine resting on the rocks in his pool but the baby ducklings were nowhere to be found. No trace of them anywhere was visible for they were in the belly of Don Tortuga.
When his father got home from work Noah told him the baby ducks were missing. His father went out to the chicken coop with him, looked the crime scene over, and then announced, “Here’s where I blew it, Noah. See the door there between the pens. There’s a three inch gap there under it. The baby ducks went under it and got in the pool with Don Tortuga and he ate them. I should have caught that and blocked it off. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”
Noah didn’t say a word as they went back to the house. His father sat down in front of the TV and watched the news waiting for his wife to call him when supper was ready. Noah went and got his twenty-two rifle, went out to the chicken coop, and shot Don Tortuga in the head. He had to shoot him in the head for he knew a .22 couldn’t penetrate a turtle’s shell and would ricochet and might hit him.
His father came out upon hearing the shot, said not a word, picked up the dead turtle, took it outside, doused it with gasoline, and set Don Tortuga on fire. The next day he scattered the ashes to the wind.
True to her word Paula Periodista called next week to announce that she would be out to do the follow up story that she had promised her viewers. Mr. Gutermuth told her the truth as to what had happened but that didn’t deter Paula any. She told him not to worry. That she’d take care of everything and still do her follow up story. Told him she’d go over everything with the two of them when she got there and tell them what to say just like before. Mr. Gutermuth tried to talk her out of it but after he was told by her for the umpteenth time that she was coming and that was final, he gave up figuring the sooner he got all this nonsense over with the better.
Paula had a plan. She gave her intern her company credit card and told her to go buy some baby ducks at Tractor Supply. Well the intern when she got there found out she had to buy a minimum of ten ducklings. So she charged them to the station, didn’t even look at the amount due, and signed Paula’s name. She bought ten Pekin ducklings, Pekins are an all white breed, and called Paula.
“Bring them to me at the Gutermuths at one p.m.,” Paula ordered.
The intern did so and handed Paula the box of ten white ducklings. Paula had already gone over everything with Mr. Gutermuth as to what she would ask him and as to how he was to answer. She decided it best not to ask Noah anything under the circumstances because sometimes kids say the darndest things.
Things got set up and they were ready to roll.
“Well today I’m back here with the Gutermuths with that follow up story I promised you as to their animal rescue efforts concerning the Tortuga Creek oil spill. And as you can see the ducklings cleaned up quite nicely.”
The camera then focused on Noah holding a baby duckling to his cheek, cuddling it, smiling, all as he was instructed to do in order to get that heart warming effect.
“Who’d have believed these little ducks were white under all that coat of oil we showed you last week. You guys did a great job cleaning up these babies. Thank you.”
“Thank you Paula,” said Mr. Gutermuth right on cue. But then Mr. Gutermuth decided that he had had enough of this charade and decided to go off script. “A lot of work went into all this Paula. A lot of work if you know what I mean. Don’t you think our viewers at home would want to know the story behind the story, the rest of the story?”
Paula, knowing what he was driving at, instructed the cameraman to get a shot of the ducklings. The camera then zoomed in on the ducks still in the box with the Tractor Supply label clearly visible on it, then realizing his mistake, zoomed back to Paula.
“Tell us Mr. Gutermuth how is Mr. Turtle doing?,” Paula asked, trying to get things back on track. That being the next line of this TV docu-drama.
“The Call of the Wild got him Paula. He’s gone back to Mother Nature herself.” That line was per the script and Mr. Gutermuth said it because it rang ever so true.
“Well good for him. That’s where he belongs.” That was part of the script too.
“Let me tell you all about it Paula,” said Mr. Gutermuth. That wasn’t part of the script.
She didn’t let him say anything further and cut the interview short. “That raps it up from here, back to you Donna.”
Paula unhooked her microphone. “That’s it fellas,” she screeched to her crew. “Get everything packed up pronto. We got ta get back to Houston and do another heartwarming gut wrenching animal story about some goddamn crippled up cat for the five o’clock news. Chop chop. Hurry up. Let’s get a move on people.”
Noah brought forth the box of ducklings and presented them to Paula.
“You keep ‘em kid. I don’t want those god damn messy poopy things.”
She turned her back on him and left. She never heard him say, “Thank you Ma’am.”
Later that month when the station’s credit card bill came in, Paula was called into her boss’s office and asked to explain the $89.95 charge for ducks.
“I had to have them to do the story,” she explained.
“What happened to them?” asked her boss.
“I gave them to the Gutermuth kid. He was a nice boy and I thought it would be good public relations to do so.”
“Good idea and that was good reporting too Paula,” complimented her boss.
Paula got a raise shortly after that.
