My turtle died just yesterday,
which really made me cry.
I could not understand why God
would make my turtle die.
My mom told me poor Sammy
would be happier in Heaven,
and so we held a funeral
around the hour of seven.
Three kids arrived with flowers
and that sure did make me glad.
It all was so exciting
that I wasn’t quite so sad.
We placed Sam in a jewelry box,
surrounded by some cotton.
We sang a hymn and said that Sam
would never be forgotten.
We dug a hole six inches deep
and put the box inside,
replaced the dirt, and sang again,
then everybody cried.
Now today my folks are trying
to really cheer me up.
The time is right, I do believe,
to ask them for a pup.
This was first published in 2001, in my children’s poetry book, The New Toe: Poems To Tickle Your Funnybone
The Lonely Meatball 
Ah, yes! Those dreadfully smelly little turtles you had to feed from a can of dead house flies! I remember my little sister was really sad when hers died and kept digging up the teeny box– to see if he had gone to heaven yet.
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Did he ever get there?
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Dunno. I kinda lost interest in the whole enterprise.
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A puppy might do it, lol. I love it.
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We have two cats buried in the back yard. I’ll have to remember to tell the next owners of our place about the location of the burials… I wonder sometimes what I would do if I found bones (that I didn’t put there) when I dig in my yard. Quickly rebury them, or try to determine from what beast they came from…
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