Now You See Me...

One summer afternoon, when we were busy and I had far too many other things to do, a coworker and I spent an exhausting half hour crawling through bushes that seemed to be 10% leaf, 90% thorn, in search of a tortoise.  It helps to understand that it was the zoo's tortoise, a red-footed tortoise from South America, about the size and shape of a football.  It was a nice day, and one of our volunteers had taken the tortoises outside to get some sun.  He'd put them down in the grass so they found forage, maybe find some slugs or other delectables, and then he turned his back.

He swore it was only for a moment.  Rookie mistake.

"Let me guess, it all just happened so fast that he was gone before you knew it?" asked my other co-worker acerbically (or at least as acerbically as your voice can sound when you are crawling on your hands and knees through the bushes, spitting out twigs).  The volunteer didn't reply.  Frankly, I thought my coworker was being a little hard on the kid.  Animals are incredible, but we have a tendency to exaggerate their chief qualities.  Cheetahs are fast, but not as fast as many people think they are.  Great white sharks are dangerous, but not as dangerous as many people think they are.  Tortoise are slow, but... well, you get it.

I've actually seen some pretty impressive tortoise athletic achievements over the years.  Most of those have been brute-force related, with larger animals plowing through walls that were inconsiderately placed in their path.  Agility might not be a tortoise-forte, but I've seen a pancake tortoise scale a low fence that was taller than the tortoise was long.  And as for speed - well, they can move surprisingly fast when they want to - and few animals can be more single-minded when there is something that they want to do than a tortoise.  

It could even be tricky taking two or more tortoises outside at a time, I'd found, and keeping an eye on them.  Inevitably, they will set off, at high (tortoise) speed, in opposite directions.  The volunteer was right to want to put the tortoises out for some sun - but an enclosed area might have been the better choice.

In the end, we did find our shell-covered fugitive, much to the relief of our thoroughly-abashed volunteer.  By the time we did, the three of us - volunteer, coworker, and I - were thoroughly scratched up, smelly, and sweaty, having clambered all over the place, ducking and crawling into every crevice we could find, and a few we'd never imagined.  The goal might have been to give the tortoise some exercise, but in the end, we were the ones who got the work out.