Cómo hace dice la tortuga?

I've dropped a few pounds lately, thanks to a diet more effective than partying with Bobby Brown, bulimia or black-market Mexican fen-phen. In a word: turtles.

I'll start by saying I heart my building and my neighborhood. I can't lug a suitcase up stairs without someone leaping to help me. My parents were in town last week and saw my place for the first time. There was a strategically placed young child on the stoop who chatted with and enchanted my mom.

I'm thankful they weren't here for the sign taped to the window in the lobby the next day:
"You lucky I don't have a gun, or I kill you. Come here again, and I call police."

Sounds like I missed a good party.

So there's the small detail of my neighbors completely forgoing English, even when speaking to me and my whitey-white roommates. There's some sign in Spanish in our trash area that may or may not say ''Don't put your trash here, or i kill you." One of the supers was trying to explain something along that line when I set my bag down there a few weeks ago. Between his no English, and my ascertaining that he was not asking directions to the library or stating his age or number of siblings, the conversation quickly devolved into pointing.

Some young hoodlum in the next building rounded up a half dozen big turtles from the park next door and abandoned them in a plastic wading pool in the next courtyard over. I think they were dead when I spotted them from the stairway window, drowned in rainwater. It was awful. And I don’t know if it was subconscious or just to toy with me, but I got home that night and my roommate had Turtle Soup ice cream in the freezer.

I wanted to Google a picture of turtles to add to this post, but I still can't relive it. So I'll tell my tale with this photo. This sums up mi barrio:




I caught up with the other super sweeping the lobby and tried to plead for the turtles.

ME: Hi there, I think there are some turtles in the courtyard that are in trouble.
HIM: Yes, there are two courtyards.
ME: It’s the one I don’t have a key for…
HIM: Courtyard there (points) and there (points)
ME: Right, and in that one there are some turtles in a little pool. Could someone help them?
HIM: Yes, me, you, someone can do it.
ME: I don’t have a key to get in there. Can you help?
HIM: Turtle. (Goes back to sweeping.)