And now we have two tortoises

So here she is, tortoise number 2. Isn't she lovely? She looks a lot like her sister in the other pen, but this one is a little bigger. I call them sisters, but I assume it's by adoption not blood. They, and a male, were all adopted by the same little old lady, who died and left them to, I think, her daughter, who turned them over to the tortoise club this spring. I have the original adoption papers which show that two of the tortoises were adopted in 1961 and one in 1976, but it doesn't say whether the two females were from 1961 and the male from 1976, or what. Still, I think it's fair to say that these are rather senior tortoises -- because of course they may not have been babies when they were adopted.

So sweet.

It's delightful having two tortoises, but I think it was somehow more fun for the babies to have only one. They could focus all their (unwanted) attention on her -- now their effect is diluted. They run back and forth between the pens. It makes them cranky. Today Baby A actually threw some little rocks at the tortoises -- OK, not really AT them, but into their pens. I stopped that in a hurry.

Finally I set the boos up to play with their water table and that occupied their little minds, so the tortoises could go about their own business undisturbed.

And what is the business of a 50-year-old desert tortoise? Well, they take a lot of naps. "Night-night," the babies chant, as the tortoises retreat to the corners of their pens, where overhanging boards provide shade and shelter from the wind. When it isn't hot, cold, or windy, they go for walks, exploring their 12-foot long pens to see if anything has changed. They walk in their water dishes, spilling out all the water. They munch on grape leaves and hollyhock leaves. They move their bowels. They stare into space, thinking about something, or perhaps not.

Today would have been my mother's 88th birthday. She loved the desert tortoises we had as pets when I was a kid. Even in her 80s she talked about how she wished she could have one again. I would so love to tell her about the ones I have living with me now. At least I know she'd have been happy for me. Or, come to think of it, envious! Maybe she would have come down for a visit to see them, despite the bad by-du in the kitchen and the rattlesnakes on the roads.

Or I could have taken them to visit her -- driven up to the Bay Area with two elderly tortoises rumbling around in the back of the car. I could have walked into Palo Alto Commons, her old assisted living facility, with a big plastic storage bin, and if the lady at the front desk asked me what was in the bin I could have said "cookies." I could have taken them up to her room and unpacked them and we could have watched them walk around her living room.

It's probably just as well I can't do that, since the tortoises would probably not like it at all. But my little mother and I would have had fun.