Saturday, May 5, 2007

The Tortoise Whisperer


It's the same every morning.

My buzzer goes off at 7:45. It's squeaky, annoying and has the same waking effect on my body that the bell had on the salivatory glands of Pavlov's dog.

So it's a quarter-to-eight, but Tillie has been awake long before then. Tillie is the cherry-headed, red-footed tortoise I inherited from the mother who bequeathed her to me shortly after Christmas. Her mother only visits her daughter once every other month and while present, inevitably breaks all the rules I've established for Tillie. It never fails: Tillie's mother, absent for two months, blows back into her life like a cool breeze, gives her a new tortoise-toy, allows her walk all over my bed* and generally plays the role of "good cop."

I'm digressing.

Tillie's awake long before 7:45 am.

I've deduced this because at 7:45 in the morning, her cranky face is always mashed up against her glass tank like a curious child peeking through a hole in the fence. While a cranky face is hardly a signifier of someone having not just woken up, the spot upon which Tillie normally grinds her face is nearly a foot away from her sleeping quarters.

And if you've ever seen Tillie move, you know that 12-inches to a tortoise equates to a brisk walk through the Southwestern Sun-Belt to humans. For Tillie to be standing buttressed against her glass wall, it should be understood that it took her at least an hour to get there.

And by the time she does get there, she's pissed.

I don't know what it is about most animals, but their life goals seem to be finding food, eating it and then excrementing what they ate three hours after eating it. They carry out these shenanigans with the pointed concentration of ninja assassins.

Whereas most pets persuade and cajole their owners into more food, Tillie bullies and berates her way into extra tomato slices.

Once she's done wiping the sleep from her unsettlingly black eyes, shaking the dust off her shell and taking the long stroll outside her cave, Tillie muscles her two red front feet onto the tank glass and stares at me until she has her food. Most mornings the eyeball-screwing I take from my daughter lasts long enough for me to shower, shave, brush my teeth, check my e-mail and pack my lunch.

Have you ever stared at someone for three quarters of an hour waiting for them to feed you?
I bet not, it takes moxy. It takes cajones and bravery and moxy the likes of which haven't been seen since Mae West was a starlet of the silver screen.

My daughter Tillie is the Mae West of tortoises...


Mae West doing her best tortoise impression. Tillie doing her best Mae West impression.

...See? They're basically one in the same...

Do you have any idea what it's like to be stared down like a bitch every morning by a 6-inch land invertebrate until their breakfast is served? I dare not explore what waking up to a pair of eyes burning a hole in me, waiting for chopped up dog food, three ounces of lettuce and a tomato chunk is doing to me psychologically.

And once I do feed my bossy girl, she immediately wants nothing to do with me.

She takes a quick dunk in her reptile bath and goes back to bed like a surly teenager. Throughout the opening months of 2007, Tillie seemed more interested in sleeping with her back to me than maintaining any meaningful interaction. To be honest, I'm unaware of what a "meaningful interaction" with a tortoise would look like, but I can't imagine I've had it. Even still, after all this time, when I attempt to pet her dry Cheeto-colored head, she flinches like a math-geek playing dodgeball.

I love my girl. How else would I be able to respect a creature that ate her own poop when I wasn't snappy with the strawberries? But I do question my future effectiveness as a "real father"** What does it say about me that one of the most guiltily humorous things I've seen all week was Tillie falling on her back? If my kid falls off the swings, am I gonna stand there and watch him or her try to wriggle upright or am I gonna run over there and wipe the wood chips off their snowsuit?

What was God thinking on this one? Why would He make creatures with tank-like bodies and the curiosity to climb things of which they run the risk of falling off?

This is almost as cruel as God putting an "s" in the word "lisp." ***

Having a baby girl tortoise scares the crap out of me. She doesn't make any noise, doesn't have any power, doesn't even get on my nerves unless I catch her eating her own poop;± but I do still have some animosity over the whole morning stare-down thing.

Why is she so angry with me?

7:45 in the morning, there's Tillie standing - not next to her food dish - on top of it. It's reminiscent of prisoners raking their metal food bowls across their cell bars at chow time.

Not all is lost. To be fair, when I feed Tillie her tri-weekly whole strawberry, I still panic at the sight of the small red stains left on the wood chips near her food dish and around her mouth. I constantly mistake strawberry juice as Tillie-blood.

No, I don't have any ideas how tortoises might draw blood, it's a momentary panic.

The fact is, even though watching Tillie whittle an entire strawberry down to a red stain is grosser than listening to someone eat a banana,**** I watch her nevertheless. I am still fascinated by her. I did stop chuckling at my upturned Tillie long enough to turn her over, set her back on course and watch her speed over to the rest of her food.

Maybe the answer isn't that I'll be a bad "human-person father," but that my kids will be raised not to fall down unless they want to be ridiculed. I'm sure that's it. Nothin' to be worried about.

Now here, look at these... like any proud papa, imagine me pulling out my wallet, unraveling a plastic card holder and presenting you with a series of boring photographs of Tillie.

Remember to pretend she's the most adorable thing you've ever seen, or I'll punch you square in the nose and talk about how fat your wife has gotten recently.

No one wants that. So just play my game.

Here's Tillie...

This picture was taken during our trip to Itillie. We loved our time in the West Indies.
The water in the background is from the Antillies.

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* This is against the rules because for some inexplicable reason, Tillie always poops when she's allowed to walk on any surface other than her wood-chipped turtle tank.

** Some of you will scoff at the insinuation that my relationship with Tillie is not an example of "real parenting." To you scoffers, I say: Get your heads out of your butt. You would all look at me crooked if I truly thought raising a pet tortoise was the same as raising a child.

I haven't a clue why my kid and I would be at a playground when it's cold enough to warrant a snowsuit.

± Why do so many animals instinctively do this? Are humans missing out on something?

*** I'm pretty sure God didn't "invent" the word "lisp." And really, having an "s" in the word lisp is only mean to those with a lisp, to the rest of us, it doesn't really matter.
In other news, I've discoverd that I enjoy challenging my own statements made in these blogs. It keeps me on my toes.

**** Ever try to eat a banana without making any noise? You can't do it. It's impossible, no matter how careful you are. And the sound of eating a banana is gross enough that if you pay too much attention to it, you'll not want to eat any more bananas. So I don't even suggest trying it for fun.

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