basking in the sun
One summer’s day about three years ago I was prospecting for a few nicely squared field stones in a remote country place where I gather such things when I came upon a turtle. The turtle, morosely planted in the shade of a clump of stringy grass, cast upon me what I considered the plaintive look of a lonely creature seeking companionship. So I picked it up, placed it in the effective holding pen of the bed of my pickup, and after completing my business drove home. If you are already offended by my blatant turtlenapping, I shudder at your reaction to what comes next.
For what happened next, and what happens altogether too
frequently in my life these days, was oblivion.
Preoccupied with other matters, I did not immediately unload the stones,
and only when I went to do so two and a half days later did the turtle reappear
in my consciousness. Removing a turtle
from a landfill dump is one thing.
Starving it is another. What most
alarmed me was the fear of a possibly lethal dehydration. My original thought had been simply to move
the turtle to a better zip code. But now
I decided to put it in our atrium, one feature of which is a small pool
frequently refreshed by rain and generous infusions of tap water, frequently
recirculated by an electrical pump through the mouth of a concrete dolphin
mounted by a cement rodeo-riding putto.
The pump is controlled by a switch in the kitchen, reachable by even the
smallest ambulatory grandchild when sufficiently motivated; so the dolphin
keeps pretty busy.
The atrium is about twenty feet square and has many other
attractive features. When I consulted
written authority concerning the housing of pet turtles, I discovered that our
atrium was the equivalent of the King Ranch and the Taj Mahal conjoined. It
could comfortably accommodate a half dozen carapaces. The place is replete with vegetable
delicacies and literally crawling with scrumptious insects. Like Onan our frequently shaken bird-feeder
regularly spills its seed upon the ground.
It turned out later that the root cavities left by long gone birch trees
would prove perfect for hibernation.
Other inhabitants of the house, or frequent visitors to it, soon
noticed that there was a turtle crawling around the atrium paths and swimming
in its pool. I tried, successfully for a
time, to be as dumfounded as anyone else.
Perhaps it was spontaneous animal generation, as in Aristotle? But eventually I had to come clean. My spouse named the turtle, obviously a
female, Chloë. To the delight of the
grandchildren, she became a part of the family.
Fast-forward now several turns of the seasons, and through
two successful atrium hibernations. Now
I am working at the bottom of my garden in the warmth of an early summer
morning when I see headed straight for me through the field grass, like a bee
toward the hive, a really large turtle, obviously a male with sex on its mind. I hesitated not for an instant. I knew what this turtle needed and where it
might be found. I scooped it up, carried
it to the outside atrium door, introduced it into its artificial paradise, and
returned to my tomatoes. Testudo Twain
provided me a second opportunity to keep mum until others made the discovery, but
that didn’t take too long. Once again
Joan was ready with the perfect name: Hector.
emerging from hibernation
We kept alert for significant tortoise social interaction
but saw only indifference and occasional bickering. Both turtles disappeared by around
Thanksgiving. Hector, covered in mud,
reappeared briefly on a bizarrely hot day in February, then like the Punxsutawney groundhog wisely retreated for
six more weeks, when within a few hours of each other both Chloë and Hector
reappeared. Since then they have been
having public sex on a shockingly frequent basis. And we have had to make a slight adjustment.
You are probably aware that a number of my colleagues in
literary study have demonstrated that “men” and “women” are passé—the categories I mean. It turns out that what we call “sex” is
neither a natural category nor a fixed one, but a fluid condition constructed
by society. The failure to recognize
this truth causes enormous problems, and perhaps even accounts for the election of Donald Trump. During all my years as
a professor, to my enduring shame, I resisted this scientific discovery,
confidently espousing reactionary opinions born in the interstices of a
premodern mind. When they go at it our
turtles do not make “the beast with two backs,” as Iago calls it. Their amorous sport would better be described
as “the shell game”. But it turns out
that I totally constructed—or rather misconstructed—their
so-called sexual identities. That is, we
have been forced to conclude on the basis of empirical evidence that the large
and aggressive Hector is actually Chloë.
The demure and tidy Chloë is actually Hector. Somewhere among the woodruff there must be a
cache of well fertilized eggs. Perhaps I
will be able to offer an update to this post in eight or ten weeks.
