Abigail Shryoc says she’ll never recover from the moment she watched an upside-down turtle unhelp itself in the most dramatic way possible, just moments after she flipped it right-side up. Shryoc came across the turtle stuck upside-down, flipped it around, and then happily watched it take off. Unfortunately, the turtle made a poor choice with its new-found freedom. It ran right off a ledge and tumbled a dramatically long way down a hill, ultimately landing at the water’s edge (you guessed it) upside-down.
“I thought I was helping him,” Shryoc wrote in her TikTok post sharing the video, which has over 25 million views. “I didn’t know the ledge was that big of a drop or I would’ve stopped him oh my god. Don’t worry I went down there to turn him over again.”
[RELATED: Angler Learns the Hard Way—Don’t Mess With Snapping Turtles]
The TikTok community loved this one.
“Turtle: ‘Don’t ever help me again,’” wrote one person.
“Nothing could’ve prepared me for how long he rolled,” wrote another.
“I know I shouldn’t but I cried laughing. I’m sorry turtle,” commented a third.
Watch how an upside-down turtle responds to being helped by a human:
Part 2
Shryoc wanted to do right by the turtle, which ended up in a worse situation after her help (through no fault of her own). So, she ran down the hill to flip it back over again and saw its shell had been damaged.
Here is the highly anticipated part two of Shryoc’s video series:
“I was on the verge of sobbing when I saw his shell,” she wrote, “but I think he’ll be ok?????? I moved him closer to the water so he could get in easier because where he landed was still on a little bit of a ledge.”
What do you think? Did she do the right thing? There’s no way she could have predicted this outcome.
Header stock image by Sandi Smolker/Getty Images