I’m reading on a bench in Sunset Park on a blustery spring day. There’s a temporary band shell set up over to one side of the park below me, and a sprawling street fair-like row of booths stretches along the sidewalk offering the usual fare of street food and cheap goods. Groups of teenagers play soccer, large families have settled down to picnics in the grass, and old men shuffle along in pairs, engaged in deep conversation. I sit and take in the scene for a while, then return my reading; when I look up again I notice a small Mexican family (a father, daughter and toddler son) clustered around something on the ground. I can’t see what the object is, but it appears to be moving, for the three of them moving along with it. A remote control toy? A small pet of some kind? Finally the object on the ground emerges: it’s a fully-grown turtle! It’s plodding along in the dirt, then the sidewalk, purposeful and seemingly oblivious to the giggling, bouncy children surrounding it. After a while other kids catch on, and soon there’s a group of ecstatic children hovering around the animal, commenting on its sluggish progress, leaping over it, giggling and shouting. Every so often the turtle pauses, as if to consider his current trajectory – which seems to be a simple straight line across the paved sidewalk – then continues on in the same direction. The assembled children are a mixture of Chinese and Mexican, and the parents (also fascinated by this unexpected reptilian encounter) call out in Chinese and Spanish, occasionally nodding to one another politely, without words in common.