The Family Heirloom: 
Valuable Lessons I Learned From My Tortoise During Lockdown

As someone who recently thought to themselves, “What would happen if I put my tortoise in the microwave?” I am in desperate need of a creative outlet to exorcise my demonic desire to roast my dearest and oldest family member, to see if he’ll go crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Like a spring roll. Or a lovely pie.

For those of you that don’t know me (*waves awkwardly from a government-advised distance*), I have a pet tortoise called Tom. I talk about him a lot. I spend a lot of time correcting people when they call him a turtle (he can’t swim) or a “toy-toyze.” It is pronounced “tour-tus,” you uncultured SWINE. He has been in my family since 1937. Once, I told someone this and they looked through me into the distance with a haunted glint in their eye and whispered, “he’s seen so much.” It was an odd moment. Tom was bought in Woolworths by my great-grandmother for sixpence, which was less than the value of a loaf of bread, and is around £1.27 in today's currency. Tom has been passed down through the maternal line, so if all goes according to plan, hopefully one day he’ll be mine. 

Tom is so much more than a pesky reptile. He is an heirloom, and in sixteen years time, he will be an antique. My tortoise makes your pet dachshund, probably called something charmingly whimsical like, “Oblong,” look a bit pathetic now, doesn’t he?

You would think that a creature resembling a wrinkly, toothless old man who once fell backwards into a giant salad bowl and never managed to escape, and decided to wear said bowl for the rest of his life, wouldn’t be particularly good company, but Tom is a delight. He hibernates every winter, so I don’t get to see him for up to six months each year. Every time he is put in his special hibernation box, the thought pops into my head that I might never see him again. But he’s still hanging around. Since being in lockdown, I’ve been spending a lot of time with him, observing his mannerisms, his habits, his diet, and his profound inner thoughts. He’s a very complex character. So I thought I would publish my ethnographic findings. 

1. Stay home 

Seeing as Tom carries his house around with him all the time, he must have found Boris Johnson’s Stay Home slogan very frustrating and confusing, because he already is home and isn’t able to leave- unless he somehow slips out of his shell and into something a bit more comfortable. I’ve had a lot of anxiety dreams about this, and it’s not pretty: I wake up in floods of tears, having seen Tom’s wrinkly, naked, de-shelled body dance through my subconscious. Either two weeks or two months into lockdown- I can’t quite remember- there was a magical moment when a snail, a fellow home-bound creature, shimmied his way onto Tom’s back, and the two of them bonded over how long it takes them to get places. This wasn’t very socially distanced of them, so I plucked the snail off and threw him into the compost. 

Tom’s very essence seems to suggest that he is encouraging us all to stay home. I would tell him that lockdown is being relaxed, but I’m too worried that he’ll escape to the pub and never come back. In his defence, it is a very tempting concept. 

2. There is still love in the time of Covid-19 

Despite his grand age, Tom is showing no sign of slowing down, ahem, sexually. Hot and sunny weather really does it for him, and he will spend entire days humping anything in sight. He has a real thing for shoes. No shoe is safe. Regular exploits have included a gardening shoe that is so worn-out it has developed its own ecosystem, and a single black Wellington boot he seems to have a fetishist attraction to. After he has… relieved himself, Tom will often crawl inside the welly boot for a post-coital nap. Like being back in the womb. Or the egg, in his case. 

Despite Tom’s string of affairs, he always comes crawling back, willy between his legs, to this small stone tortoise we have in the garden. I remember officiating their marriage on my grandparent’s lawn when I was little. It was a beautiful and moving ceremony. Coitus with Stone Lady Tortoise is always brief, familiar, rehearsed. He will violently throw himself against her, head-butting her to initiate the ancient mating ritual, until he is ready to mount. A part of Tom’s shell is actually worn away from excess frottage. The sound of him smacking into a stone is pretty alarming, and there have been times I’ve had to interrupt him to check that he hasn’t cracked himself open like an egg in vain. He’ll then start making these disturbing hissing noises, his mouth open wide, gums bared, his pink tongue glistening in the sun. He’ll then roll off, and run over to me to demand food, or to hump my shoe. 

Recently, I found Tom asleep in the corner of the garden under the (appropriately phallic) fig tree. I picked him up and saw something hanging from his bottom. My first thought was that a fleshy slug was dangling off him, or that something had bitten his tail and it was bleeding, or that he’d pooped blood. But alas, it was just his willy. His eyes were closed so it seemed he was having an exciting dream from which I’d rudely roused him. After he opened his eyes and saw my giant face looking at him in sheer horror, his “member” then recoiled and seemed to rotate around itself and fold back into his tail. Like a corkscrew, but less practical. I don’t know why I’ve gone to the effort to describe that. No one needed to read that. Sorry. It’s hard to say what I’ve learnt from this frisky behaviour. Maybe the importance of spreading love in these testing times? Or to make the most of those around us? Yeah, that’s probably it.

3. Old tort, new tricks

Over the past few months, I have witnessed some peculiar, previously undiscovered and unrecorded behaviour. First of all, Tom has observed (correctly) that I am the weakest member of my household, so I am the easiest target when he wants feeding. He’s learnt to bite my toes to indicate his hunger and assert his dominance, because he knows I would do literally anything for him. Normally, Tom insists on being hand-fed because he is a scaly little prince, but the other day, he managed to climb onto a plant pot twice his height so that he could feast on the leafy goodness of a home-grown lettuce. This was a significant character arc. He’s also been experimenting with different cuisine. Tom has moved away from his basic diet of cucumber, dandelion, and the occasional strawberry which may or may not have been soaked in Pimm’s. He is bravely heading into the unknown territory of more exotic food groups, including vine leaves, bits of apple I bite off and distribute into his mouth like a mother bird, and rose petals. He eats roses! He is the cutest tortoise in all the land! 

Another alarming development in his behaviour happened one day when I noticed a small bit of grass stuck to his nose, and despite his wriggling, I managed to pull a full blade of grass out from his nostril- like when magicians pull a string of handkerchiefs out of their pocket, but a lot more exciting, and probably not appropriate for children’s birthday parties. I think Tom was just as surprised as I was, because he then did a very explosive wee all over my leg. It was like pulling the pin out of a grenade. I guess that what we can learn from this is the importance of trying new things to keep ourselves and others entertained during this very dull period.

I am fully aware that a reptile is not trying to communicate with me or teach me anything, but at least I’ve found a way to occupy myself over the past three months which hasn’t involved my inevitable submission to knitting. Not yet.

Claudia Stanley is a fourth year student at the University of Edinburgh studying History of Art and French. She is the Creative Director for Ensemble Magazine.