Animal Hospital!
Not A Fair Contest!
Regular readers to this august journal will know that just three days ago Boncuk, the world’s greatest dog, was run down by a cowardly truck driver in a hit and run incident. After a precarious night on the side of a cliff she was rescued, treated by a vet and now abides in the porch in our home.
Today we added to our animal charity by rescuing this tortoise, which was attempting to cross the road near the petrol station in Turunç. The size of an average sea pebble it could also easily have been run down by a car, or even a cement lorry and crushed. Naturally we picked it up and after thoroughly photographing it released it into the garden.
This is the season of the kaplumba [which is Turkish for tortoise]. Last year I saw several and helped them with their road crossings. The larger ones are most ungrateful, they hiss, and fart, sometimes they piss, and vocationally they defecate over their kindly rescuer. This little fellow however was very well behaved.
Goodbye Little Kaplumba, Hoşçakal
March 3rd, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Charity begins at home and if I recall correctly the local farmers hate tortoises as they have a tendency to eat all their plants, so bang goes your garden.
I also know that they are rather edible when baked in the ground, preferably served with a chilled bottle of “Sancerre” and not a cheap bottle of white wine??
You know how the neighours hate cheap white wine, even though they drink it and potter back home totally unbalanced!
Just out of interest, why pick something up that farts, urinates and defacates over you? and why do tortoises always lay on their backs after being impacted by passing cars?
There are so many unanswered questions to our universe, we picked up a tortoise a few years ago and all it did was urinate over the hire car.
Bloody huge tortoise!
My god, I need another drink! (hic!)
March 4th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Phil,
I downloaded a free e book called ‘A Guide To Rearing Mediteranean Tortoises‘ from the Internet. It said that tortoises needed to be indoors at night but since Boncuk is sick here and might have eaten the kaplumba I took it to your house.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I discovered that it had grown to an alarming size overnight! Perhaps this wasn’t that astonishing since somehow it had knawed through the beer cans in the fridge and consumed most of them before attacking the cheap pink wine.
Unfortunately it then was sick over the furniture and shit and pissed everywhere.
Oh well, better than being caught by the local farmers I s’pose?
March 4th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
Damn, shame about the beer cans!
But it was more than welcome to the cheap pink wine, save’s Lucy having to drink it?
I thought you’d used it all stripping the wrought Iron furniture? obviously not!
March 7th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
I tried the cheap pink wine on the chairs but it corroded the aluminium so I had to go back to paint stripper. Indeed I’ve used several litres and still there’s some layers of paint on the table and chairs.
The pressure hose is working superbly though.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Well done!
As the proud “pissed on” road rescuer of 3 of the little devil’s id like to name and shame my 3 = First there is SULTAN = so named as he was found on the road to Sultaniye springs, had him 2 years now = getting BIGGER AND POOIER = Wont eat anything tortises are supposed to eat = Tomatoes = Wont even sniff them!! The other is OKLUK = so named as he was found on the road to Okluk = Now hand feeding loves sweet corn and cumber. Next and last is IZTUZ = Yes you’ve got it… So named as he was found on the road to Iztuzu – Turtle Beach.
BUT…. Ive called them all males??? Are they??? Maybe its the farting that has catogorizes them and the hissing when your expecting them to do something they dont like? Or should they be females??? Hissing when you talk to them and their not in the mood for being talked to and the walking off in disgust = Yes must be females!