Most mornings are the same: I wake up (sorta), fall asleep in the shower until the water goes from warm to cold, dress in the dark praying that my socks end up matching and go to the celarium of my apartment where my tortoise Tillie sleeps.
I assume she sleeps there, everytime I stand at her tank to check on her, her eyes are open.
She's alert and skeptical.
She hears my footsteps and imagines that it's bath time, her least favorite time of each month. Imagine your haircut and dentist appointment rolled into one terrifying trip.
That's bath time for Tillie.
So when I say that she sleeps in her tank, I'm just assuming. I really don't know.
What I do know is that after I've changed my socks around three times so that they match, visit Tillie, feed her and change her water, she's already up. Always. No matter what time I get up in the morning, she's standing in her food dish waiting for me.
When I wake up at six, it's easy to assume she's only been standing there a few minutes or so. When I get up at nine and recall the times I've been up at six, I imagine my bratty little tortoise standing on the equivalent of her breakfast plate for damn near three hours. Can you imagine if your children pulled that shit?
It's possible that she hears me get up in the morning and falls into first position, but my room is far away from her tank, so I doubt it.
Editor's note: I just Wikipedied "tortoise" and found nothing about them having sensitive hearing. I'll continue assuming there is nothing noteworthy about tortoise's hearing, especially after I double-checked my work by entering "human" and also saw no notations on us having special hearing.
Because humans have no special hearing, I can only deduce that neither do tortoises.
It's bad enough that she is standing on top of her food dish like some radical hippie protester, but because tortoises don't make noise or show any emotion whatsoever, my American sensitivity processes this as hostility. My understanding of pets (and our love affair with having them) comes from an exchange of shelter and food for undying affection. But that's not the vibe I get from Tillie. Now firmly entrenched in reptilian adolescents, Tillie can only be seen as an uppity spoiled teen. Nothing I do is right, she never wants to hang out and walk on the floor near me anymore. She sleeps all day and (apparently) is up all night waiting to be fed.
Where did I go wrong with her?
5 comments:
I wish I had a tortoise
You wanna borrow MINE for a while?
sure, why not. Do you think she'll survive the trip in the mail if you send her to me?
Probably. She's a tough little cuss. She was snuck onto a plane without any incident.
She went through metal detectors, never complained when her ears popped while climbing altitudes and was calm throughout the rough landing.
Perfect. She's a trooper than. I'm not sure I could get used to her staring at me every morning.
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