A Single Stone Turtle

Here’s one that I just can’t publicly say where it is because I can’t be sure someone might decide it would look good in their rock collection (or garden), go look for it and snatch it up. It’s a single stone representation of some kind of turtle that I can’t identify by species, a piece of artwork that could stand on its own, but oddly enough is sort of hidden in a row of stones somewhere along the Housatonic watershed. 

I had my hand on the stone that rests on it and was tempted to remove it and others from the row of stones to take some photos of hard to capture details but I didn’t. I just couldn’t cross that line into vandalism. This is the finished side above. The other side doesn’t appear as remarkable:

But then again, perhaps the other less remarkable side is sort of a clue as to how the turtle was created – “sculpted” you could say, maybe.

Someone wiser than I might say that you can see some fracture marks on this rougher side, evidence of pecking and polishing on the more finished side.

Or a “glacially fractured piece of stone with evidence of water wear or some other sort of weathering on the more exposed side that is merely a geomorph on a typical Anglo American stone wall that was unintentionally made by tossing field clearing stones up against an early wooden rail fence.”