World Turtle Day: Rescuing Fire-Attacked Turtles (from MARIO!)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't light shells on fire!

As a reminder, May 23 is World Turtle Day. It's a day dedicated to savings turtles and tortoises on Earth, sponsored by the American Turtle Rescue. It's a fine demonstration of the good things that happen from American leadership on Earth. But for this year's World Turtle Day article, I would like to direct your attention to events that took place in Brazil in mid-2016. A turtle got its shell burned from a fire, and doctors had to save it by 3D-printing a shell.

There is this whole weird angle in The Mirror's reporting of this story that make out the human veterinarians to be akin to Marvel's Avengers, and quite frankly, I don't care about the humans here. I care about the turtle, which is named Freddy (but named by the humans, so they probably weren't BORN as a Freddy). Freddy's shell is described as being “destroyed” in a “bush fire”, which Americans may know better as a “wildfire.”

Now, what may have caused that to happen?

KoopaTV lacks the Earth-based resources to formally investigate this, but I do have two theories.

Either Mario did it, or someone influenced by Mario did it.

Here's why they both make total sense.

Do you remember what was going on around that time in 2016?

Mario was all over Brazil in early-mid 2016 because of the Rio 2016 Olympics. Team Koopa was over there, too. We couldn't actually locate the plumber while we were there, which only means he went around unimpeded. Burning things. That's his special ability, you know. He leaves flames in his wake, which have a spectacular ability to cause fires.

Mario does this for fun. Believe me, I've been on the receiving end of it. He's all YAHOO!

Freddy may have been caught in that. Quite easily.

Alternatively, impressionable Brazilian kids may have taken after Mario's example, and decided to attack shelled wildlife (including Freddy) with fire. After all, is that not what the LEGO Super Mario set encourages? They just introduced a Fire Mario costume with the one and only purpose of killing Goombas and Koopas with it for coins. Reminder that the only reason the LEGO Super Mario set exists is to teach kids that murder is a normal activity you do with friends.

Of course, encouraging a fire-based Mario pal has long been a goal for the plumber. Just look at his first amiibo, introduced all the way back in 2014. IT FEATURES FIRE.

With the power of influencing poor behaviour through merchandise, Mario doesn't even have to be physically present at the scene of the crime to be a factor. (Although, to be clear, he was.) This increases Mario's power exponentially.

It's one thing for his Dr. Mario World to drug everyone up on his world. It's another thing for merchandise to be exported to cause trouble in your world.

For the sake of turtles everywhere, please join Koopa Kingdom in our efforts to stop Mario! Feel free to encourage burning Mario merchandise. Better than those matches being used on shelled creatures, like poor Freddy.



Ludwig and the rest of KoopaTV feels a sort of kinship for the Earth turtles and tortoises, despite Koopas being a totally different species. Have a good World Turtle Day! And please share this article to people in order to raise awareness.


For World Turtle Day 2019, Ludwig wrote about various other upsetting turtle-related stories.
The difference between predator kids and a superpredator like Mario is that he can burn turtles or Koopas with superpowers, like fire from his hands.
World Turtle Day 2022 has turtles snapping back against humans.