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| Tom plays hide |
Kenneth and I had a running joke about how Tom the turtle was going to be left to our children in our will. You see, box turtles of his variety tend to live 40-60 years in captivity. Some even live 80 years. That's a long, long time for a family pet. Particularly for one who never really bonded with his people.
Kenneth picked out Tom the turtle when he was 7 years old. When you're 7, turtles are really cool. (There's a lesson here: Never let your children pick out a pet until you have researched their lifespans.) Since turtles are often sold back to pet stores by their owners, and Tom was full grown when Kenneth got him, it's not entirely clear how old he was. Or even if he was indeed, a "he." Anyway, Tom had a happy, uneventful 22 years with Kenneth's family and with us. He was always afraid of people, and when he was taken to get some sun and Vitamin D (it's supposed to be good for turtle shells and skin), he would seek places to hide (like under a bush in the picture above). He was not, what you would call, a social creature.
In October, Tom started eating less and less, until he barely ate anything in a week. Then it got to the point that he didn't eat at all. He seemed to be hibernating, but he had never done that before, and his tank was still being heated to at least 65 degrees every day (which should have prevented any hibernating). Still, he became less and less active. We checked on him on Saturday, and he didn't seem to be doing well. His eyes were sinking and he was lethargic. He barely tried to hide in his shell when he was picked up. We gave him a bath, he drank some water (as usual for bath time) and we gave him some food. He didn't keep anything down, and we talked about taking him to the vet the next day. (At the time, we were getting ready to attend a funeral for one of Kenneth's co-workers.) The next morning, his eyes were sunk in, and he was unresponsive. He could have been mistaken for hibernating, but his eyes were too sunk in and he didn't wake up in water (as he would have if he had been hibernating). It was clear that he had gone to the big forest in the sky.
We buried him in Kenneth's parents' backyard Sunday. Kenneth briefly eulogized on how he "never made it to the Galapagos like he always wanted..." I felt like Auld Lang Syne should be in playing faintly in the background, but I wasn't about to sing. Thinking Tom needed something, I placed some fallen pine branches on his grave. Juniper, oblivious to the solemnity of the occasion, watched the whole thing with a clueless grin. After a moment of silence, we went walked back into the house. It was a simple, fitting end to a humble, perpetually frightened turtle.
Rest in peace, Tom "T-Dizzle" Turtleman. 1989?-2011
