the wayward tortoise

don's mom has owned tortoises and turtles as long as i can remember. she's a school teacher so she has used them in her classroom, but more so, they are her pets. they roam freely in her back yard and sometimes it has been hard to find them.

feeding these pets was always a part of the routine for my kids when they were younger while visiting grandma and grandpa. nothing too exciting, but always part of the routine that they enjoyed. i can still picture them sitting on the green grass in the backyard just staring at however many were there at the time, chomping down on fresh fruit or a head of lettuce. watching them scurry around the backyard trying to be first to find their hard-shelled friends.

in recent years, the number of pets have decreased. they either die or get out of the backyard somehow. so, as usual, when we were staying there last week, someone asked about the tortoises. we were sad to hear that the last two were gone. one had died after a young kid sat on it too hard (kinda comical) and the other one escaped last summer while grandma had workmen at the house, for months, redoing her kitchen.

so imagine our surprise when don went to the garage one morning and just sitting there was a tortoise. this was the one that grandma thought escaped. she hadn't seen it since last summer. they do hibernate so it spent several months probably buried deep amongst the many boxes in the garage. but there were just as many months that it wasn't hibernating. amazing! needless to say, grandma was astonished and very happy.

at first, the tortoise seemed pretty sluggish and non-responsive. it didn't eat when we tried feeding it. but by the second day, he (or she?) was eating and moving around, hiding amongst the many plants in the backyard. hopefully it will be there the next time we visit.

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link of the day:
http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/077/2/e/Animator_vs__Animation_by_alanbecker.swf