SAN DIEGO STATE — In yet another case of Valentine’s Day gone hopelessly wrong, one SDSU student was violently mauled by turtles in SDSU’s turtle pond. James Zachery, a marine biology sophomore, was picnicking with his girlfriend Alisha Smith by the iconic pond when he got on one knee and brandished a diamond ring to his sweetheart of two weeks.
“Shell-shocked,” Alisha Smith described herself. “I couldn’t believe it. We had only been on one date, and he decided to pop the question.”
Zachery, a self-proclaimed animal lover, would often visit the site two to three times a week, reflecting by the quiet waterside and often feeding the koi fish with leftovers from his lunch.
“I’ll be honest, I was a little creeped out that James loved that pond so much,” Smith said. “When he proposed, I had to say no. All he talked about was that stupid pond. He obviously loved those turtles more than me. Turtle-covered sheets, turtle socks, turtle underwear, he had it all. So I asked him why he didn’t just ask the turtles out on a date instead and pushed him into the pond and, well, you know the rest.”
For more than three hours, couples enjoying Valentine’s dinners nearby were subject to this turtle takedown.
“Yeah, we didn’t really know what was going on, but the screaming created this nice sort of ambience, so we let it carry on for a bit,” Jake Ashbury, an English senior said. “My bad.”
“At least he died being eaten by what he loved,” Smith commented.
SDSU’s Executive Caretaker of Turtle Life Horatio Gomez apologized profusely to the Zachery family, admitting to switching the turtles’ diet to a strictly carnivore diet was, “on second thought, probably a very bad idea.”
Friends and family of Zachery have selected this Saturday as a day of remembrance. Turtles and koi are said to be strictly prohibited.
SDSU police could not be reached for comment on the event that has since been referred to as “Turtlegate”. So far, no arrests of humans or amphibious creatures have been made.
—Chris Pocock is a journalism junior.
—The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
—This story is an inherent work of fiction and by no means true. Any similarity to names, events or wildlife is entirely coincidental.
