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 My proneness to napping and my natural ability to fall asleep within 20 seconds was superceded by a neuro-electric charge that had every cell in my body on tiptoes; or tip-endoplasmic reticulae.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