My chelonian biographyMy parents always taught me to respect turtles. Especially my mother -- when she was a child, her parents had a tortoise. The tortoise was very curious, running into the place when her name was called. They kept her for a long time, until the tortoise did not survive one particularly severe winter's hibernation. Mom's second attempt keeping chelonia (for you who don't understand the word -- this mean both turtles and tortoises in Latin and it's used when you want to speak about both) was about 1967 -- four years before I was born. She got a very young, captive bred tortoise from the head of ZOO Prague. Unfortunately, the tortoise died relatively quickly ... When I was five, in early summer 1977, I got my first tortoise, Barbora ... I named her and fell in love with her. This picture was taken in summer 1977.
The simple reason why this pet survived my inexperiencied handling, was that my love was undying. Every summer my whole family left the capital city and spent two months in country .... Where Barbora was enjoying sun and grazing many hours daily under my careful observation. She was an escape artist... no matter how carefully I used to watch her she escaped at least three times each summer. Her record was more than 500 meters across a road that had quite a bit frequent traffic ... It took me three days to find her that time. It's me with the same tortoise, 20 years later.
I was turning more and more into a tortoise as the years went by. And somehow it happened that the number of turtles in my home increased... I hope you won't be shocked if you meet me some day -- I am a very honest, sober looking guy (second from the right ;-] ).
All facts published here are based on a true story and real persons. |
