Dr. Metablog

I would not want to be reincarnated as a turtle. Not at all.

Should it happen that I were to be reincarnated, I would prefer to return as one of those great sea birds — the Wandering Albatross or the Great Frigatebird  or the Northern Fulmar — that cruise for hundreds of miles over the Pacific — soaring effortlessly, joyriding the thermals, blissfully savoring the salt spray at dawn and dusk. It would be glorious — although not entirely without a downside, because if I were such a bird I would have to sustain myself on a repulsive sushi diet of raw fish. Yeesh.

But to live the next or a subsequent life as a turtle — what a grim unpleasant prospect! Turtles do not soar; they're earthbound, and they move so slowly that they're almost immobile. At very best, they slog or plod. It's not that they're unsuccessful in their own way; after all, they've been around for 200 million years. Generations, therefore, have plod, have plod, have plod. But is there a creature on earth whose bodily configuration is more limiting, more dictatorial? Turtles spend a lifetime schlepping carapace and plastron up and down hills or over the desert sands. How can an animal constrained to eternally lug an outsize ponderous shell experience any kind of freedom or joy? 

Besides, turtles are ridiculously ugly. 

 

Bulky thick inelegant legs ending in frightening claws. Absurd useless tails. Toothless gaping mouths. Prominent nostrils, wrongly placed. Horrid corrugated necks. No ears, none at all. Foolish, fatuous expression. The only part of the turtle that might be considered attractive is the carapace (when it's not coated with slimy vegetation or studded with leeches), but in the entire history of the planet, no turtle has ever been able to admire its own integument. 

 

Imagine being reincarnated as a creature so imperfectly designed that it can't regain its legs when tipped onto its back. If I were a turtle, I would hate that. Legs flailing in the air. Undignified. Double yeesh.

 

Plus, many turtles eat worms.

 

Moreover, if I or someone dear to me were to become a turtle — it's going to be a long haul, reincarnation-wise. Let's say, for example, that you were to be born again as a dung beetle — why, you would endure a very unsavory couple of months, but then — on you would go to the next life. Once reincarnated as a turtle, however, you're liable to be stuck in that ungainly shell for a century. And worse still — some turtles "brumate" for half their lives. That's a heck of a lot of time to spend in a state of suspended animation. In addition — and this is rather shocking — some turtles extract oxygen from water through their "cloaca." I can't imagine how they do that, and, frankly, "'twere to consider too curiously to consider so." Not to mention turtle sex. Do turtles cuddle or snuggle? It must be quite an accomplishment to work around those massive clanking  shells. 

 

So no turtle reincarnation for me. But to tell truth, I find reincarnation itself, like most religious or quasi-religious ideas, utterly baffling. I presume it works something like this. I die, my soul is released from my corpse and immediately enters into a new body — in this case a newly fertilized turtle egg. (I have no idea how this process works — but let's all agree that it does). Immediately, there's a glitch. Turtle gender is not determined in the usual way, by XX and XY genes. Turtle gender is a consequence of the temperature at which the embryos develop inside the eggshell. Warm, male; cool, female (or vice versa in some species). What this means is that if my soul was infused or assimilated or injected into a turtle egg, it would not be immediately known whether I was going to be a boy turtle or a girl turtle. I don't really care, frankly; there's not much advantage to being one or the other. Turtles are not particularly sexually dimorphic and both genders are equally hideous. But I would like to know right away and not have to wait on some quirk of the weather. 

 

Reincarnation puzzles me for still another reason. How can I be sure that I haven't already been reincarnated? Perhaps I was a turtle (or an albatross) in a past life. I don't remember being other than I am, but how can I be certain? 

 

Or, to switch points of view, perhaps one of the turtles pictured above was once, let us imagine, Ragnar Naess (1900-1972), a bachelor sorghum farmer from O'Neill, Nebraska. Or even one of my less brainy former colleagues. How could we determine it; how could the turtle know it? If it's undeterminable, why does it matter?

 

Gosh, reincarnation is a tough nut to crack.

 

[December 15, 2022. Pearl Maneli writes: "I believe current reincarnation theory explains that your soul wouldn't transmigrate into a turtle at the moment of conception; it would do so only when the turtle hatches from the egg. So you can let your mind rest easy on the question of your turtle gender."]

 

[December 16. Vivian de St. Vrain responds: "Thanks, Pearl. I am much relieved"]