Amazing story conitnued ...

Of course, only avid readers of The Enquirer would believe that my Russian tortoise shucked or unzipped his shell, scampered around the house without it like a lizard-man escaped from P.T. Barnum's circus, then settled himself back into his shell.


Other than the famous batboy, one of my favorite Enquirer headline is: "Ancient Skull Talks and Sings to Scientists."

"Man's Tortoise Leads Double, Shell-free, Life," would rank right up there, I think.

I posted the previous tortoise fiction to raise the point that it is very difficult for us to get away from the very inaccurate and cartoonie idea that a tortoise lives inside his or her shell, like, say, a dog lives in a doghouse.

To my knowledge, only a hermit crab lives outside of its shell of choice, and that ever so briefly until it finds a suitable (tight fitting) abandoned seashell in which to seal itself from predators and to retain moisture. One of the more famous hermit crabs was "Crusty," in the 1964 Don Knotts film, "The Incredible Mr. Limpet." (Even though listed as a family comedy, parts of it scared the 7-year-old me at the drive-in.)

Henry Limpet wants to be a fish ... "I wish, I wish I were a fish," and it happens. Live-action Don Knotts becomes a cartoon fish and even garners a girlfriend, "Ladyfish."

Crusty is a friend and helper.

Great line from the movie -- Limpet: "Do you suppose that we could just be more or less friends?" Ladyfish: "Friends? But wouldn't that be more or less nothing, Limpet?"

Anyway, tortoises (and snails) do not inhabit or borrow or wear their shells, any more than you could say that a person lives inside their rib cage, or inside their skin.

The bone structure of the tortoise is unique and amazing, as the backbone and ribs of the animal are grown into or fused with the shell. The tortoise will have a line of "scutes," (from the Latin "scutum" or shield) which are the visible segments or plates of the shell, along the backbone. These are called, oddly enough, vertebrals. Along either side of the vertebrals is a row of "pleurals." The outermost scutes that skirt the tortoise are called marginals.

That's it. Just the three rows. Not endless numberless scute upon scute. Even the giant tortoises have the three rows, they are just bigger.

If a tortoise is out of its shell, it is not in the shower. It is dead.

Two months together, and only one unusual occurence

Yesterday marked the end of the second month that Ilarion has existed under my care. Given the many sources of inaccurate, incomplete and mythological information on Russian tortoise husbandry, this two months is something of a miracle for both of us.
The only thing exceptional so far was the night before last, when I caught Ilarion cruising around without his shell.

Here was his strange little brown, yellow and green body – looking like no other creature I have ever seen, scampering around his estate, with his shell left parked on the far side of his little bridge (handcrafted, I might add).
We are apparently to look for oddities such as this once in a blue moon, one of which we are actually having this month. Check your calendar: Full moons on the second AND the thirty-first. (Second one in a month is the blue moon. Very rare. Only happens once every blue moon.)
So, anyway, here is Ilarion, sans shell, climbing more like a monkey all over his estate. His yellowed inside-shell skin looked like uncooked chicken skin. His forelegs looked like he was wearing a woven shirt from the days of the Renaissance. Big sleeves, you know.
With what wondering eyes did I watch as my tortoise – or most of him – reached one of his four-toed feet through the covering, pushed it open, hoisted himself onto the roof, smiled at me and began to dance while singing, “Hello my honey …”
Believe it or not … (more anon).

My Tortoise the Food Processor

Two magic words will keep all of my 11-year-old daughter’s friends from wanting to hold or handle my tortoise: He poops.


The ick factor is very significant among this demographic.

Possibly for the same reason that we don’t keep our toilets in our living rooms, Ilarion seems to prefer to poop in other places besides his enclosure.

It is advised that Russian tortoises be soaked in a warm, belly-deep bath for about 20 minutes twice a week. Ilarion uses this opportunity to read the comics, review the information on the back of a deodorant can, and poop.

Also, whenever I let him sit on my stomach with my hands folded over him for a hide box, he will occasionally leave a log on my shirt. We’re talking a pencil-thin dropping here.

Tortoises have some unique anatomical features, not the least of which is their digestive system.

Russian tortoises, as well as other species that naturally dwell in arid terrain, have a couple of adaptations in their innards.

They are able to absorb every last hint of moisture from the food they eat. Ilarion doesn’t really chew his food. He pretty much bites and swallows, so already you can see that the stomach is an effective food processor.

The stomach is followed by a “hindgut” system that further absorbs moisture from the food that has already gone one round in the primary stomach.

Although I keep a saucer of water in Ilarion’s enclosure, I have never seen him take a drink from it, nor try to get into it. When I give him his warm soakings, I have yet to see him sip from this water either.

I suspect he is sneaking out at night and going to water keggers on the outskirts of town.

The other anomaly regarding digestive anatomy is the excretion of urine. Russians do not leave a puddle. Obviously, you don’t want all of your body’s water being peed out onto the desert sand or the arid steppe. Didn’t you read “Dune”? Uric acid is released instead as a whitish glop, much like bird poop, or, if you prefer, toothpaste.

Thus, his Number 1 is more like a 1.5.

As waste product systems go, this one works nicely for the tortoise and the pet owner as well. Not much muss; not much fuss.

'There is an inherent risk in eating.'

As the end-of-the year eating season starts to build steam, I thought I would pass along some public service-type ideas with regard to salmonella.


First of all, Sal Monella is not a movie star from the 1960s. That was Sal Mineo, who starred in “Exodus,” and went on to be killed in a robbery on Feb. 12, 1976. I think he was one of the eight billion stars in “The Longest Day,” as well. One should not confuse one’s Sals.

Also, let us clear up any connection between salmonella and salmon, except to say that the research assistant who discovered this strain of bacteria was named Daniel E. Salmon. How cool is that – to have your surname transmogrified into a popular(?) disease. The resultant condition is called salmonellosis. Ironically, Daniel’s wife was named Ella. She soon left Daniel for a cooler, less geeky research assistant, Lance Diabetes.

It is the second most frequent cause of food-borne intestinal poisoning; causing diarrhea. The CDC believes the incidents are greatly under-reported (like only 3 percent of the cases) because people don’t like to talk that much about having the squirts. This talk is most often kept in the family.

The first most frequent cause of intestinal poising is eating. A spokesman for peanut butter is quoted as saying, “You can’t say any food is completely safe. There’s an inherent risk in eating.”

Gotta love those defensive spokesmen for foods that make news for bearing bad bacteria.

Apparently, all reptiles should have a warning sticker on them from the federal government that indicates these animals can carry and shed salmonella bacteria. Tortoises are included in this possibility, and there is no way known to eradicate the bacteria from the animal.

So, like with the swine flu, this means a lot of hand-washing is in order, as well as the general avoidance of allowing one’s tortoise to romp on the kitchen counter among the raw chicken pieces scattered there, left at room temperature for the better part of a day with milk residue and raw egg whites sloshed on the wooden cutting board.

Speaking of chicken, half of the chicken sold in America carries salmonella. This comes as no surprise since chickens thrive and laugh more when they are living in their own poop. Cooking is what takes care of the salmonella we voluntarily carry into our homes on a weekly basis.

Other foods that salmonella bacteria enjoy include poultry in general, pork, alfalfa sprouts and an estimated one in 20,000 eggs.

Salmonella has to make its way into the intestines through the mouth, so touching a tortoise and licking your fingers is not advised. Once you have touched a tortoise, your unwashed hands or clothes can carry the bacteria to someone else, so it is also advised to avoid licking the fingers of someone else who has just touched a tortoise – even if it is your tortoise and the animal seems too cute to cause the runs.

Dr. Hades reappears 27 years later -- Again, I am in the wrong room

When last we left me I was stranded on a gurney in an Arkansas ER after having quietly announced myself as an emergency. The doctor on duty, Dr. Hades, had missed school the year they talked about bedside manner and compassion.
At about the time I was starting to believe I was in a Twilight Zone episode, a tenuous throat-clearing brought me back to reality – or at least a commercial break.

It was the orderly, waving his empty plastic pee flagon at me. His bright facial expression was easy to read: Would I like to try again?

For at least a change of scenery I got up and agreed to “give it another whirl.”

After a bit of worrying, I finally managed to “make water,” as my British friends put it. The water in question was a tad pink; a vast improvement over the coloration an hour ago. I was feeling better.

After getting back on the gurney and waiting some more, Dr. Hades stepped in and said, “Your blood sugar wasn’t 800. That was someone else’s.” Mine was 240, he explained. Still pretty high. (Normal people usually have a level of 120 or so.)

“We found red blood cells in your urine,” he said.

“Yes, I know.” I said. “I saw them.”

Tests and two days in the hospital with a country singer roommate were inconclusive. It was hypothesized that my daily jogging on an empty bladder had caused the inside lining to rub against itself to the point of introducing red blood cells to the urine. “Hi, nice to see you. I don’t think we have ever met before, have we? Well, don’t be a stranger. Are you leaving now? Oh, so are wee!”
Being made to feel unwelcome is something rarely forgotten. For me, it is the quickest way to cause me to never come back again. It doesn’t matter how self-forgetful I am supposed to be, or high-minded, or ready to indulge another’s weakness.
To the point, it was easy for me to consider tortoise owners to be among the most friendly and all-embracing group in the world – not as much so as members of the International Jugglers Association, but, who can top them?

For the most part, I believe, I am right about tortoise owners.

As I have only had Ilarion for just over six weeks, it seemed wise for me to join a few Yahoo groups that were topically bound to the care of Russian tortoises.

One of the groups, not surprisingly, uses the name RussianTortoise. I name them here only because there are other Yahoo groups that address themselves to this particular tortoise, and a generic reference could cast an undue shadow on them.

A week ago I asked the group in question about diet, since tortoise diets differ from species to species.

A woman in the UK proceeded to beat me about the head and ears via her reply.

It was then I realized that Dr. Hades had transmogrified into a cranky, superior, resentful, unpleasant, huffy UK woman who ends her vitriolic e-tantrums with, “Sorry, but you asked.”

I am in one less group now, as I was in the wrong room there for a few days.

Hi. Uh, I am an emergency. Am I in the right place?

Years ago I walked alone into an emergency room in Arkansas and quietly told the admitting personage that I was, uh, an emergency.
I had walked in under my own steam and had driven myself to the hospital in my pickup. I didn’t look much like an emergency. I wasn’t in pain. I looked like an emergency’s boyfriend, or an emergency’s older brother.
The people in emergency clothes kept looking behind me apparently to see whatever critical medical problem I had brought with me … the girlfriend, or the little brother.
I was there because there had been blood in my urine. I figured a kidney had snapped in two, or that one of Thomas Alva Edison’s “little people” that keep the body functioning had left a hatch open somewhere. (Yeah, one of his inventions was for a means to communicate with them. But, since he invented the television and feet, history decided to forget about the little people, who are nonetheless sometimes thanked at awards banquets.)

In any case, I was plenty scared and did not know what was going on with myself. Inside the ER I was desperate for friendly smiles and warm demeanors.
The first thing they wanted was a urine sample. I calmly explained that I had just peed the scariest pee ever at home and that another pee could be a while in the making. I was asked to “try anyway,” so I went into a conveniently located bathroom, closed the door and did not “try anyway.”
I had been peeing since before I could remember, and not once did I ever save some for later. I knew this cause would be lost for at least an hour, and then succeed only if I drank water for 48 of the 60 minutes.
I opened the door and shame-facedly looked over the tops of my glasses at the orderly who was on pee-delivery duty that night, and shook my head in defeat.
Then I was guided into a large room with dark green tile and escorted onto a gurney. Blood was taken from my arm. I explained to the nurse that I might need that back, since I had just seen what looked like endless quarts of blood flowing where blood just shouldn’t ever.
After some gurney solitude in disquiet, I was accosted by the doctor on duty. When was the last time I had seen a doctor? Well, 1979. I am 25 years old; don’t I think I should be more responsible? Well, everyone else seems to think so. And, by the way, my blood sugar is over 800. As a diabetic, I should pay more attention.
Sometimes I being me has peeved people. Still, I couldn’t quite figure out why this man seemed to resent me so.
“Does anyone know why I am bleeding?” I asked, unable to leave the topic to discuss diabetes or anything else.
“No.”
I suddenly felt like I was in the wrong room.
Enthusiastic Narratort: Does Tim live? Will the ER doctor punch him in the face? Find out next time … Same tortoise time. Same tortoise channel.

Dear Internet, Please make up your mind. Sincerely, Tim

The internet is not always helpful.


Sometimes I think it would be just as effective to sit in the cart exchange area with the faux-stone floor at Wal-Mart and ask passers-by for the information I need.

“Hello there. Hey, was 1967 the Summer of Love? Not sure? Well, if you had to guess, what would you say? 1965?! I don’t think … Hello there. Hey …”

It would be like a living, breathing, social networking Wikapedia.

As the Bing.com commercials suggest, Google is downright ridiculous in providing information. I just googled (yes, it is a verb, good heavens) “Leonard Bernstein,” and got 1.77 million hits. After scanning about half of them, I can clearly see that not all the references are to Leonard Bernstein. To check this anomaly I googled my own name, and got even more hits than Bernstein – 2.54 million. Of these, only three refer to actually me; and several hundred actually refer to Bernstein. There is a photo of him and me together in 1955 – two years before I was born.

Apparently in googleland there is no degree of separation between persons.

Specifically regarding tortoises – I can tell by the questions and comments that other people have posted in groups, forums and QA formats – I am not alone in my http befuddlement.

For example, coconut coir is recommended by 7.9 billion tortoise people as a good substrate (or flooring) for a Russian tortoise (sometimes called horsfields, which is from their species name horsfieldii, the Latinesque version of their inventor, Alexander Graham Horsfield, known for shouting to his assistant, “Mr. Watson! Come here! This reptile has pooped without warning all over my plastron studies! I need you!”)

Okay, but one guy on YouTube (my go-to site for unambiguous, unbiased info) says that he “does not recommend” coconut coir for Russians. Any other tortoise is okay with coconut coir, but the placement of the eyes on the horsfield (something A.G. Horsfield overlooked) makes them prone to get coconut coir poked in their eyeballs. It is sort of like locking me in a room and playing nothing but country music all the time. Talk about your constant misery.

Beings as I still don’t know what coir is, and no one in my state seems to carry it, (Do you have coconut coir? No? What about raspberry coir? Or, just unflavored coir?) I have in this case avoided the majority viewpoint, and tend to believe the eyeball theory.

For another example, let’s take a tortoise question that should have a cut-and-dried answer: Shall I feed my Russian tortoise any fruits? Yes, or no. What do you say, Internet?

Ten minutes of surfing revealed this: 20 percent of their diet should be fruit … Fruit causes loose stools … Fruits are not recommended for horsfields … Give them fruit for a treat … Fruit can cause parasite buds … Any fruit is okay, except bananas … What about tomatoes? Only in months that have five Saturdays.

Other dietary advice from the Internet: Chard should be a regular part of the diet … chard should be avoided … Offer your tortoise cucumbers … Cucumbers should be kept to a bare minimum.

Clearly, as long as there is an internet, the horsfields don’t have a chance.

How to Sex a Tortoise Without First-Time Awkwardness

In the world of tortoise husbandry one will eventually happen upon the topic of “sexing your tortoise.”


Now, this is perhaps the most unusual use of the word “sex” in the English language. We can always trust a science department to come up with bizarre usages of the mother tongue in order to explain itself to itself.

When the usage is then placed back into casual conversation, there could be ensuing fallout, if not years of therapy.

A friend, for example, calls on my cell phone and says, “Hey. What are you doing?”

“I am sexing my tortoise,” I reply.

Silence. Silence. Then a disconnect.

The first time I really wanted to sex my tortoise was in the pet store. In front of God and everyone in the midst of pet commerce I asked to sex my tortoise.

The pet store staff member avoided eye contact with me and said, sheepishly, “We don’t do that here.”

“We used to,” she continued, “but it was just too much trouble. Some people were not satisfied after they took the tortoise home, and would bring it back.”

It is just not done in the store anymore.

The internet, of course, has information about sexing tortoises, and the subject is frequently brought up in some of my Yahoo tortoise groups, where anonymity is guaranteed, or at least implied. Somehow, when I open my group’s page, the banner at the top says, “Welcome Tim!” I am assuming they mean, “Welcome Time!” and everybody gets this misspelled greeting.

As you might imagine, sexing a tortoise can be difficult. The utilitarian parts are well-hidden. Tortoise poop just seems to materialize magically. Where it once was not, there it now is. I always expect Ilarion to say, “Abracadabra, mister,” after his brief show.

Odd as it seems, the word “sex” is rarely used as a verb. For those of you who missed diagramming sentences (you fortunate fools), in the phrase “have sex,” the verb is “have.” The object – the noun – the thing – is “sex.”

You usually don’t think in terms of “sexing” something, or saying, for example, “Let’s sex.”

You can do that with the word “party.” You can have a party, or you can party, but you cannot party something.

So, sex you can have, but you cannot sex something, unless you own a tortoise.

“To sex,” in tortonian, is to determine the gender of the animal.

Most times this is easily done with animals, if that is the correct way to say it. You would think I could just flip over my tortoise and more or less notice whether he/she is a male or female without embarrassing the animal or myself.

The whole shell thing is, let’s just say, an obstacle.

So, we are told we can sex our tortoises by noting the tail.

“The female tail is much shorter than the male’s,” says the internet.

That would have been helpful, had I had a number of tortoises to observe. This was my first and only tortoise tail, so it was simultaneously the largest and the smallest tortoise tail I had ever seen.

More information soon brought some light. The males curve their tails to the side, sort of under one hip, if you will. The tail to the side made it much easier to sex my tortoise. He’s a he.

Oh, and the reason the male tail is longer, is so the he can hold on to the female with it when they are partying.

The day I bought my tortoise should be a holiday.

That Thursday night was Tortoise Day Eve for me.

The excitement and anticipation had rendered my eyes blinkless. My proneness to napping and my natural ability to fall asleep within 20 seconds was superceded by a neuro-electric charge that had every cell in my body on tiptoes; or tip-endoplasmic reticulae.

I spent all of my evening hours on the internet, Googling and Binging anything related to Russian tortoises, including the band called Tortoise. I needed to know what sort of habitat to set up for my very own (and very first) reptile.

My plan was to organize the tortoise enclosure in the morning of Friday, and then pick up my tortoise after lunch.

The night spent in the blue-white glow of the computer was a crash course in tortoise care – specifically the Russian.

The diet, the lighting – the complexities of needed UVA and UVB rays – the substrate (which is the ‘flooring’ material for what amounts to a terrarium), all had to be studied. I read until my eyes were stinging and my head was hurting. It was 5 a.m.

I tried to let myself fall asleep, but I kept running an ever-changing, ever-lengthening check list through my mind. What if I can’t find coconut coir? What is coir, anyway? What am I going to use as an indoor enclosure? Where am I going to put it in the house? Can a tortoise eat carrots? What is UVA, and do I have any in the broom closet?

Of course, above and beyond the logistical and zoological details, there was the childlike enthusiasm that is summoned up by the thought of taking care of an innocent animal and doing right by him or her.

No sleep. No sleep. Breakfast. Stores are opening. It was Tortoise Morning.

I couldn't explain it. Didn't have to.

I teach English to Korean students using internet connections. Occasionally I ask students about their hobbies.

One day in class, a boy told me his hobby was “insects.”

When I asked him why he liked to study insects, he gave me the best answer I have ever heard: “Because, they are important to me.”

My interests, over the years, seem to have each started by falling out of the sky. I don’t know what causes or initiates an interest, or a love, or a friendship, or a connection to a piece of music. Somewhere between absolutely random and the flow of perfect logic I have camped out in a little blotch of life I like to consider artistic.

Sometimes this gets me into trouble. My artistic rendition of financial affairs and business matters has left me with one failed business (followed by bankruptcy) in its wake. My artistic approach to auto mechanics one time led me to take my car to the dealer to get the new license plates attached to the vehicle. My artistic approach to housekeeping has a maddening effect on my wife. On it goes.

My only explanation as to my joy taken in tortoises is the same as the Korean boy’s: Because, they are important to me.

Somehow, I managed to convey this rather abstract concept to my wife when we eventually made contact over cell phones, while she was still on the other (east) side of South Dakota.
She was sweet enough not to ask, “Do you need a tortoise?” The artist has no category for such a question. The answer would have been, “uh-huh,” in any case.

She did ask where we were going to put the tortoise’s living quarters.

“I have a cunning plan,” I said, artistically, avoiding elaboration at this point.
I reminded her that this was not a tarantula, and that Russian tortoises eat only leafy plants and veggies (not blood worms, ick, or crickets or mice).

I also mentioned that the aquatic turtles required a truckload of gear and water and filters and blood worms, ick.

Set in relief by a hissing, bird-eating tarantula larger than a man’s hand; a turtle in need of an elaborate, stinking aquarium; and the keeping of live blood worms, ick, in the fridge; a Russian tortoise seems as easy to take care of as a ceramic figurine.

My wife was not stricken by the thought of owning a tortoise, but, she was stricken by my being stricken by the thought of owning a tortoise. She could tell this was important to me. She knew I could not begin to explain why.

That’s how love works sometimes.

'It Didn't Follow Me Home, But Can I Keep It Anyway?'

My last post specifically ended with “not to mention my wife,” because it is needful to mention her now.

We have been married for 26 years (exactly half my life) and she has always been the practical one, as I was apparently born without whatever gene operates common sense and the tiny voice in other people’s head that asks, “Do you think you should so that?”

It started during the plans for the wedding. I wanted to wear a canary-yellow tuxedo, songs of Debussy played for the prelude, and for us to “drive” away from the church on a couple of rented llamas. She gave Debussy the nod, but the rest were dismissed with, “Yeah, no, we won’t be doing that.”

I have wondrous ideas that work in my dreamscape, but, they have a difficult time sustaining reality. I may come home one day and say, for example, "Let's move to Spain." My wife would be the one who would pose several questions to dissuade me from such an impractical venture. Her first question being, "Have you lost your mind?" Answer: "Chances are."

So, I was flushed with giddiness to own not only a tortoise someday, but this very tortoise I was looking at, and this very day (it was a Thursday).

As it happened, my wife was away at a conference for a few days in South Dakota (next door to the east).

I stepped out of the pet store, sat in my car and hit speed-dial No. 2 to talk to her.
It went to voice mail. Voice mail requires a certain precision that I don't have, so I usually leave muttered, bumbling words that the listener has to untangle.

"Hi, it’s me. Uh, just calling to say hi, and to, uh, well, there is, uh, I just want to talk to you about uh perhaps acquiring something. Uh, yeah. So call me. Uh, love you."

From the parking lot, I drove to the junior high school to pick up my 11-year-old daughter. She stowed her books and violin in the backseat, then sat next to me.

"How was your day I am going to get a tortoise!" I said.
We decided to venture down to the pet store to look at the tortoise.

My daughter was excited, too – not as much as I was – at the prospect of bringing this one home.
While we were in the pet store, I missed the return call from my wife. She actually said in her message, “Why do I feel like this is going to be about getting a tortoise?”

That woman and her ESPN!

How much is that torty in the window? ... the one with the waggley tail

It had been years since I looked into a store window with childish glee and yearning, hoping that the impassible distance of a few feet would dissolve and allow me to have what it was that danced in my eyes from within.
I own a Tony Hawk skateboard deck, which I could not live without when, at age 33, I took up the board as a means of conveyance to work and to my Saturday coffees with God, where I prepared the next day’s sermon from a pocket Gideon Bible, keeping notes on a pocket Mead notepad. I had spent several weeks saving money and “visiting” the Powell-Peralta brand skateboard deck that was displayed among other popular boards of the time – all for about $100.
The day came for the purchase. The young man who sold it to me, Justin, with orange and red flames tattooed on one shank, asked if this was a gift for my son.

The last time I had the skateboard out (age 47 or so) I was at the town skate park, taking gentle (i.e. barely-negligible) rises and dips in the concrete. At one point the board went out from under me and I twisted a large assortment of parts. Bent and sprawled on the pavement, looking something like a zombie, I saw the silhouette of a teenager in the sunlight that was blinding me every bit as badly as the pain.

“Mister? Are you okay.” Well, I assured the lad that I was fine, but had decided to rest here for a while … until I could move. Could be days. The boy then saw my board and asked, “Is that a Tony Hawk?” I figured I would earn a modicum of respect and approval and get coolness points for being hip. Then he said, “Wow! I have only seen that board in a museum!” Oh, good heavens. I hobbled home feeling like an artifact.

Anyway, that same sort of storefront electric excitement went zapping through me when I realized that there was one tortoise, a Russian, among the other creatures available at the pet store. There were a few geckos, a couple of iguanas, some beautifully-colored small snakes, and this little tortoise standing like a little jewel box in his somewhat sparse enclosure.

I was a child again, looking through glass, wanting something more than anything else in the world.

'Is this a tortoise?' 'No, sir. That is a gecko'

I went to the pet store with only the intention of browsing. I didn’t even know if they would have any tortoises or turtles in the place.


Before I go further, you must know that the internet is abuzz with advice against purchasing a tortoise at “most pet stores.” There is a genuine, urgent, legitimate concern that – in the case of the Russian Tortoise – the animals are scavenged from the wild, inhumanely crated together like so many cantaloupes and shipped to retailers replete with parasites, one another’s wastes and diseases, malnutrition, dehydration and, to say the least, a broken spirit.

The animal kingdom does not have a word for “unfortunate,” but all animals instinctively sense the concept.

This is why deer and rabbits and some of my co-workers are “spooked” by unfamiliar sounds or scents. If they could speak, they would say, “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t want anything unfortunate to happen. I must away, and with haste.” Face it – their grammar probably wouldn’t be that good, but it would be better than that of most texting teenagers.

The internet vehemently advises that prospective tortophiles avoid pet stores and obtain a tortoise directly from a reputable breeder. What you are looking for is a tortoise that is “bred in captivity,” or, as they say, “captive bred,” or CB.

In my case, I and my family have had a long history with this locally-owned pet shop. I have no suspicions that this pet shop is part of the dank underbelly of the world pet trade.

When our daughters were little girls, we used to take them to this very pet shop to look at the animals. This, and the fresh lobster tank at Wal-Mart, was as close as we could get to anything zoo-like.

“All of our turtles,” offered the nice staff lady, eventually, “are bred in captivity as pets.”

At the time, I didn’t need this reassurance. Afterwards, when the internet sort of coughed in my face about buying from a pet store, I was glad she had mentioned it.

At first, I saw only the one aquatic tank at the store with three red-eared sliders treading water on the surface there. I knew this because the sign on the glass said, “Red-Eared Sliders.” These struck me as being fairly large – sort of oblong with a 10-inch shell down the length – with stunningly beautiful rivulets of color along their bodies.

On the up side, these attractive animals were only $19.95 each. The down side was significant: For indoors, I would need an aquatic apparatus with all the machinery and elbow grease that goes along with a glass tank of water in the house. People who know stuff about turtles and tortoises (and know the difference) call this the “habitat” or the “enclosure.”

I was concerned about how watery everything had to be. I certainly have no pond on my graham-cracker-sized blot of property. Not counting the hole in the street that fills up with water whenever it rains, I have nothing to offer a red-eared slider except a premature demise after a brief, pathetic existence.

The required habitat for the sliders seemed impractical for me, as much as I wanted to scoop up the three of them in my arms, pay the 60 bucks and rush them to my claw-foot bathtub at the house and name them after The Three Stooges; The Three Musketeers; Harry, Hermione and Ron; Frodo, Sam and Gandalf; or any of the hundreds of teams of three my culture had handed me over the years (Little Joe, Hoss and Adam) (Chip, Robbie and Mike-or-Ernie) (Domingo, Carreras and Pavoratti). It is endless.

Aquaticism aside, the sliders need to eat live creatures, so I would be dealing with worms, feeder crickets and (ick) blood worms. (I don’t even know what they are, but, ick.)

Also, they emit what study-weary herpetological experts refer to as “an odor” – Latin, aromatus excruciotatis.

Still, the RES, as it is known, is a fascinating, wonderful and beautiful creature.

At my house, I feared, we would both be miserable, not to mention my wife.

One giant tortoise please. Do you giftwrap?

After the exchange of souls with the giant tortoises at Reptile Gardens, I entered a phase of irrepressible, unrealistic, inspirational imaginings.


Was there some way, I wondered, that I could use my nearly nothing-square-foot backyard to operate some sort of rescue for these amazing creatures? Well, no. This did not keep me from putting “giant tortoise” at the top of my Christmas list that year; or considering what my mother would think if I asked to keep a dozen or so on her property up here in northern Wyoming.

The giant tortoise is an endangered species, so you can’t just order one on-line or wheel one out of The House of Tortoises or something.

When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands (1835) off the coast of Ecuador, it is believed there were 250,000 giant tortoises in existence. Due to the sailors of the times preferring their practical use as a fresh meat source on long voyages (they were stackable in the hold and didn’t eat much); plus the introduction of cats, dogs and pigs (and humans) into their habitat, the species is down to about 15,000 today. They are a protected species, and much care is being taken to maintain and build up their numbers.

I gradually down-sized my dreams to that of keeping a smaller tortoise. I had earlier entertained the idea of keeping a tarantula, but my wife found the notion to be a little beyond her comfort zone. It took a lot of convincing to beat that scheme dead.

I began mentioning the ownership of a tortoise as something I would like to do, but the conversation rarely went past, “That’s nice, dear,” as if I had said I wanted to sprout wings and fly, but I didn’t know what shoes to wear.

To appease me, my wife got me a very nice tortoise figurine, brassy and bejeweled, with a hinged shell that opened into a nifty little compartment to keep, I suppose, my intention of owning a live tortoise.

The back of my mind is a tricky place. It turns out that the notion of acquiring a tortoise swam around with the melodies, the prayers and the music that also occupy this area. Sometimes, like the mysterious 8-Ball game that offers up in its dark window blue-white prophesies, such as, “Ask again later,” the back of my mind sends these ideas back up to the front, where they annoy me until I do something about them.

Sure enough, the suggestion of owning a tortoise came floating up to the surface again. What was I to do?

It started with a chance meeting with a giant tortoise

I had spent my life with no particular interest in tortoises.
Today I rue this waste of time – 49 years – before things tortoisey got my attention and took hold of my imagination.


Years ago, in my early 20s, I saw a turtle of some sort cross the road in front of me while driving in a woodsy area skirting Fayetteville, Arkansas. This animal looked like an Army helmet making its very slow way across the pavement.

I stopped the pickup and slid out the door to move the critter off the road. Off he went into the grass, leaving me with no particular desire to devote myself to a tortoise or tortoises.

Much later, I had a friend who raised a bunch (is it “bunch” or is it really a herd?) of turtles, and kept these sticky-note-sized baby animals in an extra bathtub in his house. They must have been red-eared sliders, but I couldn’t say for sure.

Again, nothing led me to want to deliberately involve myself with the turtle-tortoise creature phenomenon.

I should say that, when I was a little boy – let’s say 1966 – my grandparents took me to Reptile Gardens, near Rapid City, South Dakota, and my grandfather placed me on the back of one of the giant (Galapagos) tortoises there for pictures and a slow, short mosey. This was adventurous and impressive, but no more so than riding an elephant, touching a python, feeding a reindeer, being splashed by Shamu at Sea World or petting a dolphin.

Forty years went by, and I was again in Reptile Gardens in 2006; this time with my wife, two daughters and a daughter’s boyfriend; and the same giant tortoise was there. Rides for children are no longer permitted.

We arrived early in the day, so watching the snake presentation in the open bleachers was not too hot. After touring the “dome” and laughing about a “legless lizard,” which I said I always thought was a snake, we went to the yard or court where the giant tortoises are allowed to roam freely. Sort of a giant tortoise open range.

There is a somewhat circular paved path along which some loose chains link short posts in the ground to keep the humans in their area. The tortoises are very friendly, and a couple of them were situated next to or directly on the walkway. They are not only unbothered by us two-legged types, but seem to seek a certain amount of attention and company fromus.

A gardens employee mentioned that the tortoises liked to have their necks rubbed, so I took a turn at massaging the neck of Methuselah, the tortoise I had ridden in 1966. He was hatched in 1881, the same year one of my great-grandfathers was born, and was brought to the gardens in 1956. Today, Methuselah is 128. As I treated the tortoise to the magic of my fingers, the small clutch of people in the area disbursed. I was alone in the yard with three or four tortoises. Methuselah looked directly into my eyes (and soul, it seemed) while I gently kneaded his neck. I could see more than a century in the ancient eyes that made a pleasant expression that I believe was appreciation.

I am not sure what the tortoise saw in my eyes. If he could tell, he would have known that I was becoming deeply enamored with the wonder of him and his kind. I saw no more of the gardens. I spent the rest of our time watching, massaging, and even listening to the giant tortoises. (They infrequently make a long bleat of some sort.) Not many people were in the tortoise area at the time, as there was a crocodile show going on in another part of the gardens.

I spoke with one of the staff girls there who worked with the tortoises, and I told her I envied her job.

“It must be wonderful to be with them so much.”

“It is my favorite part of the job,” she said.