My First Tortoise

When I was a little girl, my grandfather was a mason. On one of his side jobs, at my great-aunts house, he came across a tortoise. It was fairly small, and rather misplaced. My grandfather was not one for pets, so my family says it was surprising that he brought that tortoise home.

I remember it though. He walked in, with a big box in hand, and said "mi hija, I brought home a surprise". I was so excited, I followed him out to the back yard and he sat the box down. I looked up at him, rather confused and asked him what it was. He explained it was an Arizona Desert Tortoise, and it was going to be our new pet.

After a few minutes, the tortoise peeked his head out and looked around. I reached down and started petting him thick rough skin, which oddly, resembled my grandfather's skin a little bit. When my shadow passed over his head he ducked inside his shell, startled. I jumped back also. But then, we both kinda peeked our heads back out, and I giggled a little bit. The tortoise walked over to me, and I petted his shell this time. He was dirty. My grandfather went back into the house. I sat outside with the tortoise until the sun went down, by the end of the night we were best friends.

The next morning, my grandfather and I set out on our first journey to figure out how to raise a tortoise. Back then, there was no internet, so we had to go to the library. We looked up books about how to care for tortoises, and by the end of the day, we felt like we knew what we were doing. My grandfather and I raised Tommy together for 10 years. Over time, Tommy would come when you called his name. Occasionally he would escape and go across the street to my neighbors orange trees, but we would always find him and bring him back.

Tommy would scratch at the back door on hot days when he wanted something. Sometimes he was hungry, sometimes, he wanted a bath. Sometimes, I think he simply just wanted to come inside. As my grandfather grew older the tortoise would stay inside longer. You could find him chilling next to my grandfather at given point in time near the end. Tommy even had a tickle spot like a dog right behind his elbow area of his front leg.

When my grandfather was really sick, my family had to move back in to help take care of him. They wouldn't let us keep Tommy in the house anymore. Winter came, and Tommy retired to his tunnel. That was the winter of 1993, when I was just turning 13. My grandfather had died, and when springtime came around in 1994, I waited and waited. Tommy never came out.

It took a few years for me to get my next tortoise, but without Tommy, there was just this empty place, that no cat or dog could really replace.

In 1997 I was driving down the road, and saw a man on the side of a road with a sign that said "cute baby turtles $25". Cute baby turtles? Really? I love turtles!! I convinced my boyfriend to pull over, and within no time I had a cute new baby turtle...which actually wasn't a turtle, and was going to grow to be much larger than my Desert Tortoise Tommy.