'I'm not trying to poison you, honest!'
The other day, the six-year-old went round to his pal’s for a playdate.
‘He’s got a tortoise,’ he declared. ‘Can I take some lettuce for him?’
When we arrived, the very sight of the knobbly reptile brought some memories flooding back.
When I was about nine or ten, we had a pet tortoise. I can’t remember his name because we didn’t really have time to get to know him too well. For on the first night in our garden, he escaped through a hole in the fence.
For a couple of days, we were distraught, until a couple of days later our Dad miraculously found him and brought him home. For a couple of months, we watched over him like hawks, blocking all potential escape routes lest he made his bid for freedom once again.
As Autumn bedded in, it was time for our pet to go into a box, surrounded by straw, ready for his Big Sleep i.e. hibernation. Dad explained we wouldn’t see him again until Spring, and so we kissed his shell, bid him goodnight, then got on with our lives.
After a long and quite harsh winter, March finally arrived and we urged Dad to open the crisp box which had been our tortoise’s home for the past 4 months, so he could stretch his limbs and munch some cucumber.
‘He must be starving by now,’ we reasoned.
Dad dutifully went to the shed, but emerged rather grim-faced.
‘He’s escaped,’ he said.
Again, we were distraught. But unlike the last time, there was to be no miracle recovery of our helmet-shaped friend. He never came back, and we never got another tortoise.
It was only a few years later that Dad finally came clean about our pet.
Our tortoise was not one tortoise, but two.
The first one HAD escaped, but Dad didn’t miraculously find him: he bought another from a pet shop and passed it off as the escapee.
Then this imposter hadn’t actually escaped from his hibernating box: when Dad went to check on him, he discovered the gruesome rotting corpse of our beloved pet, which had clearly died of cold and starvation several weeks before.
I think from that point on, my Dad had convicted himself as being Unfit To Keep A Tortoise and so we never had another.
I was thinking all of this as I watched my son offer a lettuce leaf to his pal’s pet tortoise (imaginatively called Tortoise) at the weekend.
Tortoise was 45 years old, apparently.
‘That’s quite an innings,’ I said to my son’s pal’s mum.
Bloody good job he’s never come into contact with my Dad, I thought.
My son looked up at me. ‘Da-ad, can we have one?’
‘We’ll see, Son. We’ll see,’ I replied.
What a story (one I am sure many parents can relate to!) You never know you may be a better keeper of tortoises than your dad..!
I’m not prepared to take that risk – especially as we live in a flat with a roof terrace. ‘Dad, can this tortoise fly?’ Wheeeeeeeeeee!
I want a Dad like yours, sounds like you had a great teacher when it was time for you to become Daddy! Nat.
I never thought of him in those terms. What a nice thing to say. Thank you
Yeah I managed to do for all of 3yrs goldfish, no matter how much medicine or tank cleaning I did something got them one after another! Poor things drifting listlessly around the tank or bobbing from the top to the bottom. No more pets for us I can do with out the back breaking grave digging every few weeks in the garden!!
You ever thought of getting a job as a zoo keeper?
Ha ha yeah, I’m gonna dust my CV off and send to London Zoo thanks for the tip
Brilliant story! Reminded me of my pet tortoise called Catherine. Mum & Dad self built our house and while it was being built we lived on site in a caravan. The tortoise lived underneath the caravan and I lost count of the amount of times me & my brother would crawl under the van to reach Catherine. We Loved her but she too escaped…or did she? I’m starting to wonder now, lol!
You have to hope she’s living a long and happy life at the bottom of a garden somewhere, aged 62!
I had a mouse that did that escaping thing. I was (and still am) convincing that my Dad let it go at the behest of my Mum who was terrified of it.
I bet my mouse, called Mouse, is living it up in some mouse heaven knowing he fathered the great mouse plague of East Birmingham in the late seventies.
Good luck with the Tortoise wrangling.
This obviously happens a lot. We once nursed a starling back to health before it mysteriously disappeared. Dad said it flew away but I’m beginning to suspect my father may well be a small animal serial killer
Oh Jesus! You poor thing. Your poor dad! The poor poor tortoises! Both of them!
I had two terrapins when I was a child, Tommy and Sally. I came home from school one day to discover that the tank had gone and so had they. Apparently the tank had broken and dad had had to rehouse them quickly. Actually, they died. He told me about it last year.
Ah ‘we’ll see’…the eternal answer for everything! Like Terry we couldn’t even keep the goldfish alive either – no chance for a tortoise around here.
Kate in our house ‘we’ll see’ means yes – apparantly
Oh dear! Though I did chuckle when you found out your Dad had replaced the escaped tortoise!
Oh my god! Your poor dad! What a secret to carry around!
I keep corn snakes, who you feel about them? They make great pets, I promise!
haha my parents were so bad at caring for pets that I once came home to find the fish had leaped out of the bowl to make a bid for escape committing hari kari – goldfish suicide
is it cruel to keep tortoise in glass tanks – least them it couldnt go the way of Houdini?
the boy wants a chameleon.
not a chance.