Betrayal

⏹ Not for sensitive readers.  I am banging this blog out on a Sunday morning because the words are tumbling inside me and curdling my sense of peace.  Betrayal is a strong word, but it sums up what I have been feeling the past few days.

Speedy attacked Tolstoy with an intent to kill.  (For any new readers to this blog, I am referring to two of the free range tortoises that allow us to live in the house in their garden.).  It was Friday morning, and TD was taking a study break (chemistry this time) and wandering around the garden.  I heard anguished cries which got more and more desperate sounding.  TD was standing with tiny Tolstoy in her hand, tears streaming down her cheek.  He looked limp, with his head lolling to one side.  She choked out what she had found - the older, larger tortoise, Speedy, had turned Tolstoy on his back, and was biting at his neck.  The strong beak had bitten the eye and mouth and both looked beyond healing.  The immediate action was clear.  I gently held Tolstoy, and TD put a very angry Speedy in a confined space.  She put him in her fenced off veggie patch.  

Poor little Tolstoy.  Poor TD.  Both needed a lot of calming, and soothing before we could even assess the damage.  The swollen face and offset jaw and damaged neck didn't give us much hope for his survival. But he pulled through.  The eye is still too swollen to see if he will have sight again, and the jaw seems to be healing.  We made a "nest"  home for him in a cardboard box, and brought him inside to watch over him. Over the weekend, TD upgraded his home to a larger wooden crate that she made, and put some homely plants and gravel in it.  This tortoise is going to need intensive  care for a while still.

Tolstoy in the ICU TD made

Initially all TD could feel towards Speedy was Anger with a capital A.  I think the feeling was mutual.  Speedy ripped up the herbs in her garden, and trampled the leeks.  Too angry to look at him, we left him there overnight and concentrated on helping Tolstoy.  On Saturday morning, I prepared a portion of the garden for Speedy to live in by himself.

TD and I agreed that this incident was raw nature.  We tend to personify things some times - Speedy was obeying some natural instinct to defend territory, or assert dominance. But it felt like a betrayal.  What if TD hadn't been there at the right moment?  What if Tolstoy never completely recovers?  The garden, which has recently brought us so much pleasure, went gray in a mist of the betrayal of nature.

I reacted strongly too.  I felt broken.  This beautiful creature was damaged by a phenomenon of nature under my watch.  I hadn't picked up any signs or been quick enough to avoid the damage.  I felt drained.  But as with all crises, one copes and deals with circumstances to stabilize the situation.  The recrimination comes later.  The what ifs.  The anger.  The acceptance that there is no fault to assign.  The "we can live with this" attitude, and Gratitude for life.  Diabetes feels like a betrayal.  One expects a body to function properly, and out of nowhere, suddenly it attacks.  Nature can be so cruel. But we learn to trust again, to accept, to be grateful.   Tolstoy survived.  TD survived.  We will be OK.

 

Speedy's new garden of isolation.

"We called him Tortoise because he taught us."

 A promise is a promise - it's tortoise time.  One of our family rituals, is playing Hide and Seek with 5 of the 6 reptile members of our family.  Well, just Seek really.  They are incredibly good at "disappearing", sometimes only letting us find them after a few days.  I love how when they know they have been found, they simply stop, completely still, and retract their heads into their shells.  It's the "if I can't see you, you can't see me" defense mechanism that a lot of species, especially humans, employ.

This is Olaf

  Speedy keeping safe

So - some introductions:  Thadeus (who strictly speaking is a Thadea) grew up in Andrew's childhood household, and has been part of the family longer than I have.  She is a gentle soul, a bit of a leader, confident and comfortable in her own shell.  Speedy was rescued by my sister when he was so very tiny.  A dog had damaged his shell in several places and so he is more vulnerable and
exposed.  He hides a lot, and is skittish, and is only just now venturing further into his fynbos buffet garden.  Tolstoy - you have already met - and Olaf are the babies of the group, and heart meltingly gorgeous.  Tostoy is the tiniest, and the friendliest of them all.  Olaf is the best hider of the group. And then there are Bruin and Brown.  These two were rescued from a boutique hotel that was closing, and rehoused with us by American friends who were staying there and concerned for their well being.  Bruin is an easy going, get-on-with-everyone type.  Brown is not.  He is so aggressive that we have had to give him a separate patch of garden away from the others.  Every now and then we try to integrate him back into society, but his physical aggression is nasty, and he tries to hurt the others.  He hisses at us, and clearly had an unhappy childhoood.

TD once had to wear a tortoise for a week. Before technology had become so sophisticated and accessible- way back in 2017- TD's endocrinologist was worried that some hypoglycemic events (low glucose) were being missed and this could put TD's life in danger.  So she attached a "tortoise" to TD (her terminology, not ours).  This was a closed system Continuous Glucose Monitor, meaning it gathered and stored glucose information in the sensor, but was only read by the endo at the end of the trial period .  She could study the data, together with a food and activity diary, and give feedback.  These days, technology has moved so fast that the CGM gives immediate feedback, and TD can adjust her insulin accordingly. The 2017 device was called a tortoise because of it's shape.(and to make it less scary to children....)  And maybe because of the slowness of getting data.

I know tortoises are thought of as slow animals, but in my experience, if they want to, they can rumble over rough terrain at quite at pace.  Aesop's fable of the hare and the tortoise has the slow and determined tortoise plodding on to win over the overconfident faster competitor.  Consistent effort leads to winning the race is the supposed moral of the story.  But life isn't a race to be won, is it.  And we are not competing with anyone.  Diabetes has taught me that there are times to be slow and methodical, and there are times when speed is essential.  Yet again, it is all about balance and context, I suppose.

If you want a fix of gorgeousness, we can organise a Zoom meeting between you and a tortoise....although for most of the meeting you may just be staring at some fynbos, until a tortoise appears.  Trust me, it's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Thadeus