There comes a time when the children leave home and the parents are left with the pets. That puppy they promised to take for walks and the rabbits they swore they would clean out each wee,k have survived longer than anticipated and are now inherited along with the kids' CD collection and the assortment of treasures that are too precious to throw away.
Sometimes it works the other way and it is the older generation that bequeaths a four legged friend to their descendents. Thus Thunder, a tortoise of uncertain age moved in last spring, when his elderly owner went into care and he found himself homeless.
When Thunder arrived he had just come out of hibernation and apeared to be a very sloth-like creature until the sun warmed his shell and he took on a new lease of life. We calculated that he was about sixty years old and roughly the size of a dinner plate. He came with the instructions that he liked Little Gem lettuce and he didn't like tomatoes.
We duly bought a tortoise book and took on board all the dos and donts. Knowing that he was vegetarian we tempted him with just about every plant and vegetable known to mankind but when it came down to it, Thunder was a bit of a faddy eater. It turns out that he likes broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage - but only cooked, plus lettuce and banana. Anything else he flattens like a centurian tank en route for the Front. Occasionally we catch him nibbling at some unidentified object in the grass. Nibble isn't quite the right word. Tortoises have some sort of beaky projection with thich they stab their prey and rip it from the ground. At the end of a meal he frequently looks like Worzel Gummidge with pieces of straw dangling from his mouth. Table manners are not his forte.
When we took him in we had no idea that he had a libido the size of a sky-scraper and a foot fetish to boot. Spot a shoe at a hundred paces and he goes into seduction mode which involves squinting at it, biting it, and if it hangs around long enough, indulging in a litle amour. In order to save our footwear from a fate worse than death, we gave him his own black lace-up. That shoe had a love life most of us would envy. Approach him with bare toes at your peril!
Thunder is a Mediterranean spur-thigh tortoise. He must have arrived in Britain in the 1960s when tortoises were shipped in by the crate load to be sold for a few pence. Thousands died on the journey and more perished from ignorance when they arrived. Happily, today they can only be sold with a certificate guaranteeing that they were bred in the United Kingdom and being expensive to buy, one hopes that they are treated with more respect.
At the end of the summer we duly followed all the instructions about hibernation, ensuring that he had remembered to go to the toilet before he went. Fasting followed by a long soak in a warm bath then he was finally packed away in a box. This is the second winter that we have been through this and tendrils of unease lurk, wondering if at the end of his mammoth doze he will wake up. In fact, it will soon be time to bring him out into the daylight and let him slowly emerge when he feels so inclined.
Just because you can't take a tortoise for walks or sit it on your knee does not mean that they are not rewarding pets. Tortoises are bright, alert, curious and have excellent sight and hearing. Don't be fooled by the story of the tortoise and the hare either, for they can move at the speed of - well, not exactly a hare, but with amazing rapidity.
We miss him while he is in bed. Hopefully he will soon be back among us and his companion shoe will be released from its winter-long celibacy.
Saturday 28 January 2012
A Question of Ownership?
Like people, property doesn't have to be beautiful to be loved.
Once we rented a modest piece of land - five small fields and some tumble down stables. Grazing is always in short supply so we thought ourselves lucky to get it. There was also an element of anxiety as until that time our horses had been in do-it-yourself liveries so that there was always somebody on hand to give advice.
The place wasn't perfect. The soil was clay so that it failed to drain in winter and was rock hard in summer. The south-westerly prevailing wind blew into the stable yard but that didn't matter because it was ours.
Gradually we got to know it. A pattern emerged, chaffinches came in gangs during the cold weather then disappeared as soon as summer threatened. Pheasants braved the horses' hooves as soon as they realised that there was grain going spare. Over the years there must have been half a dozen regulars who grew increasingly tame and somehow hypnotised us into buying bird seed. To begin with we gave them names but after some months they would invariably stop coming, taken in the seasonal killing spree by nearby shooters. After that we didn't give them names - names spelt disaster. The last one, Boyo, was around for two years. Boyo wasn't his name, not really, just a way of identifying him from the more timid sort who occasionally drifted off course and then ran like hell across the field when they found themselves being watched.
Perhaps best was the spring when in late April the first swooping, hectoring swallows made an arial sortie around the yard to check that all was as they had left it. If we were lucky, two or even three broods would hatch before they made their epic departure.
The robin was our constant stable-mate. His nest appeared in unlikely places, hollowed out in a hay bale, tucked into the strands of electric fencing hung up in the tack room. He was ubiquitous, perched on the wheelbarrow, watching from the roof strut, issuing his staccato demands.
Of course, it was really all about the horses. Feeding, grooming, riding, simply watching. The months were punctuated by visits - from the farm tractor that called to take away the dung pile, the lorry that delivered straw and, of course, the farrier who came every six weeks and kept us up to date with the outside, equine world. Once a year we had our own small harvest when our hay was cut and bailed with some wonderfully antique equipment and our modest crop stored in the barn, a typical, age-long, summer task reflecting centuries of work by other ploughmen.
At one time there were five horses but gradually it dropped to two. Along with me they went into semi-retirement. Then, the inevitable happened and one day the eldest, thirty years old and adored, fell sick. Her parting was painful but dignified. I mourned her, her companion mourned her and because one pony and five fields didn't make sense, the owners asked to take the land back.
To be honest we had forgotten that the land wasn't ours. There might be a touch of melodrama here, but when asked to leave it felt a bit like the Highland Clearances, being driven from the land we loved - and love it we did.
So, we packed up years of detritus, swallowed back the tears and drove away for the last time. The degree of loss remains undiminished. Memories crowd in at unlikely times. I realise that I had planned to have my ashes scattered there but that would surely now hint at trespass. It would seem a bizarre thing, to ask if I could be cast into the air to be taken up by that south-westerly. I imagine sinking into the mud and those spring sparrows scraping me up to refurbish their nests. There I would sit, platered to the rafters, enfolding baby sparrows until they braved the world beyond.
So, other horses graze there, other people busy themselves and their voices echo across the land. Other ears hear that single mewling of a buzzard, the Dickensian, ghost-like moan of the curlew, the raucous cacophany of the flying officer goose, leading his squadron on their trek to who knows where. Meanwhile, I bid goodbye to the fields, ever aware that they never belonged to me, but I surely belonged to them.
Once we rented a modest piece of land - five small fields and some tumble down stables. Grazing is always in short supply so we thought ourselves lucky to get it. There was also an element of anxiety as until that time our horses had been in do-it-yourself liveries so that there was always somebody on hand to give advice.
The place wasn't perfect. The soil was clay so that it failed to drain in winter and was rock hard in summer. The south-westerly prevailing wind blew into the stable yard but that didn't matter because it was ours.
Gradually we got to know it. A pattern emerged, chaffinches came in gangs during the cold weather then disappeared as soon as summer threatened. Pheasants braved the horses' hooves as soon as they realised that there was grain going spare. Over the years there must have been half a dozen regulars who grew increasingly tame and somehow hypnotised us into buying bird seed. To begin with we gave them names but after some months they would invariably stop coming, taken in the seasonal killing spree by nearby shooters. After that we didn't give them names - names spelt disaster. The last one, Boyo, was around for two years. Boyo wasn't his name, not really, just a way of identifying him from the more timid sort who occasionally drifted off course and then ran like hell across the field when they found themselves being watched.
Perhaps best was the spring when in late April the first swooping, hectoring swallows made an arial sortie around the yard to check that all was as they had left it. If we were lucky, two or even three broods would hatch before they made their epic departure.
The robin was our constant stable-mate. His nest appeared in unlikely places, hollowed out in a hay bale, tucked into the strands of electric fencing hung up in the tack room. He was ubiquitous, perched on the wheelbarrow, watching from the roof strut, issuing his staccato demands.
Of course, it was really all about the horses. Feeding, grooming, riding, simply watching. The months were punctuated by visits - from the farm tractor that called to take away the dung pile, the lorry that delivered straw and, of course, the farrier who came every six weeks and kept us up to date with the outside, equine world. Once a year we had our own small harvest when our hay was cut and bailed with some wonderfully antique equipment and our modest crop stored in the barn, a typical, age-long, summer task reflecting centuries of work by other ploughmen.
At one time there were five horses but gradually it dropped to two. Along with me they went into semi-retirement. Then, the inevitable happened and one day the eldest, thirty years old and adored, fell sick. Her parting was painful but dignified. I mourned her, her companion mourned her and because one pony and five fields didn't make sense, the owners asked to take the land back.
To be honest we had forgotten that the land wasn't ours. There might be a touch of melodrama here, but when asked to leave it felt a bit like the Highland Clearances, being driven from the land we loved - and love it we did.
So, we packed up years of detritus, swallowed back the tears and drove away for the last time. The degree of loss remains undiminished. Memories crowd in at unlikely times. I realise that I had planned to have my ashes scattered there but that would surely now hint at trespass. It would seem a bizarre thing, to ask if I could be cast into the air to be taken up by that south-westerly. I imagine sinking into the mud and those spring sparrows scraping me up to refurbish their nests. There I would sit, platered to the rafters, enfolding baby sparrows until they braved the world beyond.
So, other horses graze there, other people busy themselves and their voices echo across the land. Other ears hear that single mewling of a buzzard, the Dickensian, ghost-like moan of the curlew, the raucous cacophany of the flying officer goose, leading his squadron on their trek to who knows where. Meanwhile, I bid goodbye to the fields, ever aware that they never belonged to me, but I surely belonged to them.
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