Leopardess Spots' photostream

Tortuga, the soft-shelled turtle, taking a trip to the Baytown Nature Center.

This is my pretty little girl before I bought her and loved her immensely for a little over a year. She was perfect! However, this vehicle made me come face to face with my own mortality more than a few times. The tires had no traction whatsoever and Tara liked to dance when it rained.

...especially when The Ruiner was driving, that was when I would fear for my life the most. If I was driving my Scout, the worst would be a quick scoot over into the next lane, or when she turned in a half-circle after I had taken a left from a stoplight.

The Ruiner? Sixty miles on a country highway during torrential rain. We ended up on the other side of the highway and my last words would have been, "JOSEPH, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU."

Tara's running board! It was just hanging there like a broken arm. Imagine my ultimate terror when the insurance company wouldn't budge for TWO WEEKS and I drove to and from work every day (60 miles round trip, a day)... I kept thinking, "Well, today is the day that the running board is going to fall off and kill someone."

Ufhg.

Why? My poor baby, crumpled in and halfway destroyed. When I took my pretty little Tara-Scout to several places to get estimates on the cost of fixing her, I found out that she was 40% totaled and that insurance companies only pay out at 70% or higher totaled. Ugh, this killed me.

All in all, it cost about $4k to get her fixed.

Oh god it hurts to look at, even almost a year after the fact... my poor little baby.