h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

El has bought a tortoise. She's a young female, only about 6 months to a year old. She should live to be about 70, so she'll outlive me, and quite possibly El as well.

She lives in a big cage in El's room, spending hours every day under a heat lamp. She's a Horsefield tortoise from the steppes of Russia. I know nothing about the raising of tortoises, so I be watching with interest.

I remember reading in the Fortean Times about a boy in England buying a tortoise, painting its name on its back and keeping the tortoise in the garden. Then after a few years the tortoise disappeared and was assumed dead. Some time later, I think it was 25 years, the tortoise turned up in the local graveyard where he had been happily grazing for a quarter century. The boy was now 35. He could tell it was his tortoise, because he could still see the tortoise's name on its back.

Let's hope your tortoise doesn't become as adventurous as this one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8264767.stm

We briefly had a tortose a few years back; well the people I was living with at the time had it... We'd take it outside when it was sunnny and let it have an explore about on the lawn and in the communal gardens... As they're nice and slow we could easly keep a track of where it was
Seem to recall we had some kind of nutrient supplament that we put in its water which I think was mainly vitamins and such like as well as of course the dried food and fresh veg matterial

We had a tortoise when we were young. It was called Mickey. My mum didn't have any paint to write it's name on its back in the traditional way, so she wrote it on a piece of ,asking tape and released it in the garden.

Next day, the tortoise was there, but the label had fallen off. So she re-labelled it. The same happend the next day.

On day 4...you guessed it...four tortoises in the garden, all called Mickey.

EdtheBo, that's hilarious! Only in real life!

Gnomon, geez, be a little more careful about your sentence structure! I thought that you were saying that El was 6 months old!

Hi Edward the Bonobo and Gnoman,

What lovely posts from the two of you.

In Zim, our garden was on a steep slope. Some marvellous African stone-masons came and built rock/stone retaining walls, pointing the rocks which created a magnificent terrace which overlooked the valley below the house. By clearing off the rocks which abounded on the land, we also found that we had inherited a great many tortoises of all sizes and shapes.

The baby tortoises were quite adorable. But in those days I was so busy bringing up five children. gardening, learning and playing bridge that I never had time to learn about the life-cycle of the tortoise. I thought they lived to be a couple of hundred years old.

I wonder.

Is it on St. Helena that there are many very old tortoises? I think so.

Good luck to El in rearing her tortoise. And thank you both for reminiding me about the ones we had in our garden at Dam Close in Harare. Zimbabwe. (Salisbury, S.Rhodesia 50s amd 60's)

Go well,

Kind regards

Christiane
AlsoRan80

Tuesday 22nd September 2009 6.50 BST

BTW Gnoman, will you be so kind as to remind me when I have to change BST to GMT. Thank you kindly.

Oh Gnomon I'd love to have a tortoise, when I was growing up they were very cheap and every pet shop had them - but I wasn't allowed one because we didn't have a big garden.

Now when I have a big enough garden tortoises cost £300-400 and I just can't afford that at the moment.

I hope El has a great time with her tortoise.

Christiane, there are a lots of different species of tortoise, and they live for different lengths of time. There are certainly some species that can live to about 200, but others only live for 60 years. I remember in the 1970s hearing about a tortoise dying - he had been given to Captain Cook on his travels around the Pacific, so he must have been 200 years old.

I think Royal Mail have cornered the market on Tortoises, they're called Postmen.

I like that ST!

Spotted this the other day Gnomon:-

http://www.ammadz.com/breaking-news-slowest-escape

I'm glad you posted that. I couldn't remember where I saw it.

Tut tut, ST. (see nickname)

Basically, tortoises are lizards en croute.

We had two tortoises in a huge garden in Addis Ababa. I have no idea what species they were or even what sex they were, but they were BIG - about two feet long.And the noise they made when attempting to mate(a really funny thing to watch) was EVEN BIGGER.
(This was the same garden where we used to borrow sheep to keep the grass down)

We've not mowed our lawn all summer. We have a guinea pig cage with an open bottom that we move around from time to time. The pigs mainly live indoors...until we remind the kids to take them out.

It saves on lawn fertiliser, too.

Oh poor postmen. !!

I have always had the most wonderful postmen in England. ¬`

Now living four floors up I do not know him/her unless there is something for which I have to sign. !

I miss my nice postmen. !!

Christiane
AR80

Friday 25th September 2009 18.30 BST

We keep our grass short using guinea pigs as well, Ed. We've three.