The Dying of the Light

appreciating the wisdom of Hercules

My tortoise Hercules and I have a lot in common. We prefer raspberries to lettuce, we like the sun on our face, we neither of us like to be rushed (although we can both put a spurt on when needed). We also are both of the opinion that winter is a time to slow down, preferably to the point of zoning out all together.

And we definitely do not like being weighed.

I am helping Hercules get ready for hibernation at the moment. He needs a gentle transition into his over-wintering state otherwise he could get sick or die. In September he needs to be moved from the garden to the greenhouse otherwise the late summer evenings find him buried in soil up against the garden wall in protest at the falling temperatures. In October he starts hiding under old tomato plants. Or he finds the rolls of black netting D uses to protect the soft fruit from the birds and pushes his way into the folds.

He is not stupid. He knows what cosy feels like.

At this point I wake him up to give him a bit of food every other day. He gives me one of his Looks before taking a lazy chomp out of a sow thistle, tomato or, begrudgingly, a lettuce leaf.

Soon he’s not even tempted by a late raspberry and gives me a particularly Dark Look. If tortoises could curse, the air would be blue, let me tell you. He clearly wants only to sleep. At this point I bring him into the house, bathe him and weigh him, then put him under his UV lamp for a couple of weeks, reducing the light gradually until I am pretty sure he is ready to go into his hibernation box until March.

I am not sure I took on board the level of care a tortoise needs when watching Blue Peter’s Freda being lovingly tucked into a cardboard box. Back in the 70s we didn’t pay much attention to the health and safety of many aspects of human life; we certainly weren’t being diligent with that of our tortoises. Anyone who has read Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot knowns that in the Bad Old Days you could buy an imported baby tortoise for less than a fiver and it would invariably not survive its first year in the chilly UK. Now we know that tortoises need very special care - they cannot simply be shoved in the garden and left to forage for dandelions.

The longer I live with a tortoise, the more I see the complete and utter sense of his way of living. “Progress” has forced us humans into unnatural rhythms. We should all sleep longer in the winter and move more slowly to conserve energy. We should definitely not be eating lettuce. And we should be allowed to communicate only via the means of Dark Looks.

Especially when weighed.