The Ping-Pong Ball Lisa Vear Is it a ping-pong ball or a turtle egg?

Lisa Vear - Green Mountain Animal Defenders

My brother and I were very excited. We had found a turtle egg near the pond by our school, and we were going to hatch it and have our own pet turtle! We very carefully carried the egg home and proudly presented it to our mother.

“It looks just like a ping-pong ball!” she said.

“It feels cold. We need to set it under a light so that it will incubate and hatch. That’s what they do with chickens,” my brother told us.

“Hmm.” My mother looked skeptical but said, “And then you absolutely CANNOT touch it until it hatches—if it hatches. I’ll put it up high where it will be safe.”

My brother and I eagerly agreed. Neither of us wanted to risk the turtle not hatching and jeopardize having our very own pet turtle.

My mother set the egg up on a washcloth right under a light, high up on top of a cabinet where my brother and I could see but not reach it. “Do NOT touch that egg, or it definitely won’t hatch,” she said.

For days my brother and I checked on our turtle egg, but there were no signs of hatching. Finally, my brother ran out of patience. “I’m going to get the stepladder and see if there are any signs of cracks on the side that we can’t see,” he said.

“No! You’ll ruin it!” I yelled.

“No, I won’t. I’m not even going to touch it.”

He dragged a stepladder over and climbed up so that he was face to face with the egg.

“Well?” I asked him, hoping for some good news.

“I’m still not high enough to see the back, so I just have to turn it a little. Hand me a pencil, and I’ll turn it with that so I don’t have to touch it with my finger.”

I ran to the craft drawer and found an unsharpened pencil. I raced back and handed it to my brother. Very slowly he began to maneuver the egg. But it was too round, unlike a bird’s egg, which is more oval, and it started to roll toward the edge of the cabinet…

We watched, frozen, as the egg reached the end of the cabinet and then… rolled off.

I don’t know what my brother pictured, but I imagined a yellow yolk with a turtle in it breaking open on the floor.

Instead, the egg bounced.

We watched as it bounced up and down on the floor, making the unmistakable sound of a ping-pong ball on linoleum, and Fall 2021

Photo Courtesy of: Melanie Sestokas

then rolled to a stop by the refrigerator.

My brother and I could only stare while our jaws hung open. In silence, we looked at each other, then at the egg, and back at each other.

“Do turtle eggs bounce?” I whispered.

“That’s not possible,” my brother said. “It must have been a ping-pong ball the whole time. But who would have buried it by the pond?”

As we continued to form theories in our heads, my mother came up from the basement with a load of laundry.

“What’s that doing on the floor?” she asked.

“It fell,” my brother and I said in unison.

“Hmm. I suppose it fell on its own and not because you were on the stepladder poking it with that pencil in your hand.”

My brother and I both looked at the pencil still in his hand.

“I…I…” my brother stammered… “We were checking on it because it wasn’t hatching!”

“I thought you might,” my mother said. “Good thing I swapped it with that pingpong ball the day you brought it home.”

“What?” my brother asked. “Why?”

“Because this is no place for a turtle egg. Turtle eggs need to be in a cool, covered place, where they belong, or they won’t ever hatch. They can’t be around lights and small children who will poke them with pencils.”

“So you were never going to let us hatch it?” I asked.

“Nope. It wouldn’t have lived, and I’m sure it’s hatched by now and is safe in the pond where it belongs.”

“So we would have been waiting for it to hatch forever?”

“No, I was going to tell you once I could be sure you wouldn’t be tempted to go back and try to find it again,” my mother said.

“But I wanted a pet turtle,” I whined.

“But what you want isn’t all that matters when what you want affects others, even if those others are animals. That turtle wanted to live where it will survive and be happy. You shouldn’t ever try to save an animal that doesn’t need to be saved: only help an animal that is injured or orphaned.”

“I guess,” I said, feeling slightly selfish.

“I was going to let it go after it hatched,” my brother lied.

“Well, it’s better it stays and hatches where its mother puts it, and we can enjoy seeing the eggs and feeling the excitement of hoping one day we’ll see it swimming in the pond.”

This was my first lesson in respecting and conserving wildlife, and it’s one I always remember. Even as an adult, I’m tempted to pick up adorable newborn animals in the wild, but then I hear my mother: “What you want isn’t all that matters when what you want affects others, even if those others are animals.”

And that is the story of how I tried to hatch a ping-pong ball!