Metamorphosism

Tortoise care

It was warm so we put her in the flowerbed out front. It's fenced off -- tortise-proof-fenced off, because tortoises have this Great Escape instinct thing going on -- and I have built her a cozy little tortoise house in which to spend the night.

Sometimes she spends the night there, sometimes not. Sometimes she just hunkers down among the flowers, settled into the bark chips.

It was warm so we put her out. Then a cold front came down from Scandinavia and it began raining cats and dogs. Beta and I were on our way to town, moving the concert harp and the cello and the Irish harp as well to the music school because a concert and some other gig for her Irish band were scheduled for the next day.

At any rate, we were moving the instruments. And it was dark. And raining cats and dogs, and Alpha says, Oh, bring in the tortoise before you go. Or maybe it was even my idea, We can't leave the poor tortoise outside in this weather.

Beta and I looked for her. Tortoises have a million years, ten million years evolutionary experience at hiding. They are perfectly camoflagued, they look like a mixture of bark chips and tulip leaves from above. Rain was running down my neck.

Beta suggested a flashlight. I told her all the flashlights were dead. But we have new batteries, she said. But the bulbs are all burned out, I said.

I stood there, partially wrapped in the vines of the climbing rose bush, and remarked something about Here we stand, combined IQ over 300, maybe, outwitted by a turtle.

So we delivered the instruments and looked some more when we got back.

The tortoise is usually either at the left end under some bedding plants, at the right end in her house or under a rose bush, or in the middle under a particularly bushy and stickery rose bush. But we couldn't find her anywhere.

I finally went into my shop and rigged up a naked light bulb to an extension cord. If you've never tried to find something outside with naked 60 watt bulb at night, they are very bright. You spend half your time figuring out the right way to shade your eyes, and blinking the spots away.

Plus, as I've mentioned, it was raining heavily and I began to wonder whether the last thing I would hear in my life would be ZZZZZT.

Then I found the tortoise. Under the bushy, stickery rose bush.

She was very wet, and cold and happy to be moved into the warm house. Happy. I say happy, but how do you know with tortoises? They don't wag their tails. But she did do the pushup thing she does, and she extended her head quite far out.

The next day she celebrated by taking having two large bowel movements, one in the kitchen (she walked through it afterwards, and painted a large, irregular circle around the perimeter of the room). I couldn't find the actual turd at first, because it was on a black tile (our floor tiles are white with smaller black ones in the corners). I eventually did find it though. The second dump she took in the library, which was quite nasty judging from the gagging noises my eldest daughter made cleaning it up.

The tortoise was quite lively after that, as you would be, I think, after taking a BM that amounted to roughly half your body weight.

The weather stayed cold for a few days, so there were one or two more incidents. She's back outside now.