Dan's Last Bug

Help this little turtle complete its migration to northern California. (Read the story below to find out why this is Dan's LAST bug, and why we really hope it'll make its way back to us someday.)

Once upon a time (in 2002), a couple of Dralasites decided to order a pack of 4 travel bugs from the geocaching website. Two tags attached themselves immediately to cute little critters (a sheep and a giraffe) and raced each other to England. The third one met a brave warrior and also went on its merry way soon afterward. But the fourth one, the one you're looking at, was extremely shy and didn't want to go anywhere at all.

We fed and nurtured it patiently, confident that it would soon find its own motivation to leave the nest. But it seemed content to stay with us for the long haul.   Toward the end of summer, our best friend Dan decided to move back to Boston.  We were sad to see him go, but just kind of thought of it as a temporary fix to his recent unemployment problem until the economy picked up again.

We said to our little bug, "Dan's going to Boston. Wouldn't you like to tag along? He'll take good care of you until you decide where you want to go."

"That does sound nice," said the bug with a small smile. "I hear they have good seafood there."

"The best," we replied with a straight face, knowing the bug could only have heard about Boston from us. We had many fond memories of the place, having lived there with Dan a couple years before.

The day of Dan's move finally came, and we tearfully said good-bye to our timid little traveler, whom we weren't sure we'd ever see again.

At our wedding in August (of 2002), we asked Dan about the little bug. "It settled right in at my new apartment.  Seems content to study my clownfish all day, and even gets along with my neurotic new cat Scratchy.  I've been telling it stories about my own travels, hoping something will spark its interest, but nothing's happened so far."

"Sorry, Dan," we laughed.  "Looks like we got you a new pet without meaning to."

"That's okay.  This bug of yours is no work at all."

That was the last time we heard anything about the bug.  We just figured Dan would tell us if anything new had happened. 

Dan committed suicide four days after releasing our bug, apparently after it befriended a sea turtle. His departure has been an overwhelming loss to us, and as you can probably imagine, we're really hoping this travel bug will eventually make its way back home. 

Relevant Links

• Dan's website - He was an avid hiker, traveler, and scuba diver.  He tagged along with us on a number of geocaching outings, but he didn't own a GPSr himself.
• Suicide resources from About.com-  There are lots of online resources available about suicide and depression, and this page has links to many of them.

Note: If anyone's wondering, these events really happened, though some of the dialogue may have been...er, improved upon, for dramatic effect.