Has anyone else ever drawn one to try and get it to rain and knock off early?
Back in the day, Thursday nights were half price Margaritas at the local Mexican restaurant / Catina. Needless to say come Friday morning, my hungover 20 yo self was looking to get my check and go home.
All they are is a circle for the body, a head, four feet and a tail, usually drawn in yellow keel, but draw with a stick in the mud would be ok. (The bigger the better)
They seemed to work best if you danced around them, (if you were still buzzing from last nights margaritas it was even better).
While I was waiting to give a backsight I would draw them by the backsight and do my dance, usually the IM was with me, but the PC who just had a kid and wanted his hours did not. He would really get P.O., which made it all that much more fun to do.
When the PC and IM moved ahead to my BS point, the turtle was there waiting for them.
The PO PC would put muddy water on his boots and try to rub them off.
The IM and I would start clucking like a chicken or umpah the German chicken dance music.
It was better when you had an audience, like on a construction site.
> They seemed to work best if you danced around them...
Never tried dancing around one but have peed on more than a few 😉
Thanks for that, Dan. It reinforces why I don't want employees 😉
Yes, and was almost fired because of it.
Of course I knew that it was going to rain at any moment, you could smell it in the air and it just looked like the bottom was about to fall out.
So I made a flo orange turtle on the ground, and in the presence of my boss began my best Indian dance around it.
Within minutes it began to rain.
Problem was that it rained off and on for the next six days and shut down all operations for over a week.
I tried to explain to my boss that I really didn't have anything to do with it, but he said that I jinxed it and that made it my fault.
And if he ever caught spray painting a rain turtle on the ground again....
yes! used to work with some crackers that really thought it worked too. I tried to tell them it was summer in south florida, you could practically set your watch to the early afternoon showers. but it was fun.. Then we would sit in the truck and make a circle on the inside of the windshield. if more than x drops fell in the circle in 5 minutes we bugged out. haha.
> get it to rain and knock off early?
You guys shut down when it rains? We wouldn't get any work done around here if we headed for the barn when it rained....:rain:
Besides, the rain feels good on your head, when your hung over....;-)
back in the 00's before everyone had the internet on their cell phones the crews would call the office to get word on what the radar looked like. it would piss our one party chief off to no end when i would tell him every when it was raining on him 'oh, its not raining where you are, get out of the truck and get back to work'.
It has been more then 25 years since then.
My neighbor draws them now and then.
No need for one today. It's already raining here.
Years ago I hired a young man from Lousiana to work on my crew for a job for a SWEPCO (route and power line)job we had in East Texas. He would kill a snake and then hang it inverted from a fence. It would rain every time. They crew thought he had great magic but I just figured he had watched the weather the night before.
Another crew had a party chief that was notorious for making them work until dark each day. On Fridays the gas in the chain saw can never made it past 3:00pm. Hmm. I wonder.
DP
> Has anyone else ever drawn one to try and get it to rain and knock off early?
Yep, many times, however where I am from you draw it with a machete tip in the dirt, the head must face north, and after drawing you symbolically cut off the turtles head by drawing a line with machete.
Never seen the dance or the turtle painted with paint....