A couple of weeks back, we were driving home through the next village down the valley, when we saw an old boy on a tractor swerve to avoid something in the road. I say swerve, but that suggests a degree of speed and manoeuvrability not usually seen in the same sentence as old boy and tractor. It would be more accurate to say that he employed sedate measures to avoid running something over. But I digress.
Geoff applied the brakes, to give us time to assess the situation. What at first appeared to be a small rock was moving. We knew that there are tortoises in the wild here, but we had not seen one in our little neck of the woods.
Being cold blooded, tortoises can get up a fair lick of speed when they are warm, but this one’s chances, if it was going to play chicken with tractors and cars, did not look great.
‘Stop the car!’ I cried.
‘You want to pick it up?’
‘Well, we can’t just leave it there – it might be hurt or the next car could kill it.’
As I approached the tortoise, it was clear that a car had already driven over it. The top of its shell was liberally coated with engine oil. Any idea of just putting it to the side of the road evaporated. What if it was injured? I carefully picked it up by the sides of its shell and put it into the footwell.
The dogs were extremely interested in the strange-smelling lump we had brought home with us, but the tortoise seemed unfazed. It submitted stoically to me gently wiping the oil off with some kitchen roll soaked in olive oil.
Geoff offered it some weeds and it popped its head out and started to munch. I was surprised at how big its mouth was and wondered if a tortoise would bite a human.
We decided to put it down in the chicken run, so that we could keep an eye on it and see if was OK before making any unnecessary emergency vet visits.
And that, dear reader, was how we ended up with another resident.
Geoff had some errands to run, so he was out for an hour or so. When he came back, his first words to me were ‘How is it doing?” Swiftly followed by ‘Do we have a name for it yet?’
Having had no experience whatever of tortoises, I had not really thought about it.
‘Only I thought it looks like one of my old teachers. Mr Beeks. I thought we could call it Mr Beeks.’ I was slightly taken aback, and probably did not look convinced. He went in for his killer move.
‘Mr Beeks was a teacher, so Mr Beeks taught us. Taught us. Tortoise. Geddit?’
Since that day, Mr Beeks has ambled about happily in the chicken pen. He basks in the sunshine and teases Minnow. He piles in and pinches kitchen scraps from under the beaks of the chicken ladies. He buries himself in a pile of straw and twigs to sleep, looking rather like a discarded WWI helmet.
It looks as if, at least for the moment, Mr Beeks is here to stay.
(By the way, Mr Beeks sneaked up on me the other day and tried to eat the back of my foot. It felt like being savaged by a piece of cardboard. Maybe if he had my finger in his mouth it would hurt more. I am not about to try it.)
Undefined