The tortoise club

Well, tonight I did something fun -- I went to a meeting of the Ridgecrest tortoise club (http://www.ridgecresttortoiseclub.webs.com/), aka the Ridgecrest branch of the Kern County chapter of the.... well, something like that. It's part of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club, CTTC, of which I am now a member or will be when they cash my check. Anyway.

You know how it is when you do something that's just exactly what you want to do, something that speaks to your soul? The happiness you feel, the lightness of being, the blood coursing through your veins, the pinpricks of excitement. It's late, I'm fumbling for words, but you know that feeling? Never thought I would have it at a tortoise club meeting, but when I saw the notice about the meeting in the paper I immediately wanted to go. I changed our travel plans this weekend so I could go. So maybe I had an inkling of what it would mean to me.

This is a new club, its first meeting was in December. There were 25 people at this meeting -- the little room at the Methodist Church was packed. Doesn't that seem like an appropriate place for a tortoise club meeting, by the way? Methodists are kind of plodding -- OK, I'll stop. I thought maybe there would be tortoises at the meeting, but they're all hibernating. There were people there who have NUMEROUS desert tortoises at home, hibernating. Some people have other kinds of tortoises too, and they don't hibernate. There's some kind of huge African tortoise that people buy when they're little, not realizing that they're going to weigh over 200 lbs soon. Those are available for adoption too...

We viewed a PowerPoint presentation about desert tortoises, their habitat, etc. Every time there was a photo of a desert tortoise, people would ooh and ahh, me included.

I sat next to an older gentleman who has 5 desert tortoises in his backyard. He used to have 12, but some kids stole them and he only got 5 of them back.

Imagine having 5 desert tortoises in your backyard. That sounds like heaven to me. I had thought you couldn't have desert tortoises anymore, since they're endangered, but it turns out that you can ADOPT them. You have to register with California Fish & Game, and you can't sell them or turn them loose in the wild. And you can't take them out of the state.

I realize that I have finally come up against a reason why a person might want to stay in Ridgecrest forever.