Of Leeches and Suffering

Sometimes you go though life feeling as though there is a giant leech attached to your skull, sucking out the sweet nectar of life until your cranium is nothing but a dried husk. It's no way to live. Now imagine that there is actually a giant leech attached to your skull, which has decided to jauntily drape itself around your ear in a fashion most perverse. This tortured turtle is a living monument to all the sadness you thought you knew.

This poor Western Pond Turtle has it rough...if it could speak of its suffering, surely the only words it would croak to us would be "life is pain". Dismally photographed at Golden Gate Park, San Francsico, CA.