What bwings us togevah today

Since my escape attempt, whenever I'm turned loose in the house I have to wear this harness Derick William Dalton made for me. I think it's out of an old material sample for a couch. He's so cheap. He sewed velcro on to secure it around my shell and and tied a long string to it so I can't hide anymore. I do get to run around outside more often though, so I suppose the trade-off is alright. I just wish it was a sexy lizard-skin green instead of davenport blue.

Last time I was free in the house, he left a copy of The Atlantic on the floor. Well, to be fair, his kids probably kicked it off the end table while jumping repeatedly onto the couch. Luckily I had all day to peruse it, as it's tough to turn pages without opposable digits. I'll give you primates that one. So, one article was on marriage, that it's an outdated institution and is pointless. I completely agree with Ms. Sandra Tsing Loh, of course. But then I read the article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/let-8217-s-call-the-whole-thing-off/7488/4/

I had to check the title again. Marriage? That's not what the article was about. Listen to this and decide if my title is more accurate: To Thine Own Selfish Be True.

The author's marriage got boring and so she did that weird thing humans do (you know, trying to reproduce but blocking the biological outcome?) only it was with some other guy. Then her friend complained about her marriage: her husband cooks like a French master and keeps in great shape and takes care of the kids but gives her grief about her weight and shows no affection. (I'm with him, but apparently mammals are supposed to show affection. Must be your squishy-soft skin and silky-fine hair. I have to see DWD and his wife cuddle frequently. Blech.) Another friend's hubby also keeps his hands and other things totally to himself but spends his free time watching other people pretend to reproduce. A third friend goes through men faster than I do.

I can see how that all relates to marriage, but as an expert on self-centeredness thanks to personal practice and millions of years of evolution, I can tell you that the civil joining of two Homo sapiens was not the central theme.

I'm all for free love, especially if he has a nicely indented plastron with a glistening coat of wax (ooh, that gave me chills!). But promising monogamy to a spouse and a community then backing out is colder than me in January under three feet of snow and one of dirt. And selfish. Too fat? That's why the author's friend isn't getting any? There's something else going on. Her Chef Boyar-bicyclist is either getting it on the side or has other issues he won't talk about. Selfish and selfish. Friend number two's hubby found another way to be selfish but pretend he's not. As for love-machine girl, maybe I'd better not comment, but I know how human males take a dumping. They only think they are tough.

So, she says, stick around the kids to keep parental relationships with them, but don't bother with the initial marriage part. I say go a step further and skip the parenting, too. Bury the kids in the sand with some food nearby and let them fend for themselves until they are strong enough to dig themselves out. Parenting is a waste of time.

Just don't mis-label your article in a highbrow-even-for-snobby-primates magazine. It's selfish to make readers retitle it for you.

Blind leading the bound

Derick William Dalton does not look his age, nor does he act it (but that's a different story). Mostly he laughs about it when others are surprised by his years, as he is much less droopy and bald and gray than he ought to be. On occasion though, it bothers him, and I'm trying to find out why.

A few days ago at his "job" (notice I didn't say work, because he doesn't) it happened again, and I got to hear him telling someone about it on the phone. "Blah blah blah lecture on stuff they read on the internet, yadda yadda tell me how to do my job." That was the first ten minutes of the conversation, although "conversation" isn't really accurate because the person on the other end had a chance to say three words, tops. Then my favorite quote of the conversation: "I hate it when my baby face is all people can see!"

Well, human boy, you insist on wearing clothes, so that's their only option. I got more confused as he continued his ranting, something about two bastard's degrees. I thought I knew what that word meant, and I certainly didn't think it was insulting, especially for most reptiles who don't even know their parents, much less have some kind of community-supported connection. Perhaps I don't understand, as how would one earn that title twice? The only explanation that makes sense to me is his parents married after he was conceived and then divorced before he was born. I may never know, as that's not really a polite-company conversation topic, especially not to ask of the person who provides the food. Although with a cup of tea, an extended pinky, and a British accent, it might be fine. "I say, Nigel, word is you're illegitimate as the son of a cockney dilly, what?"

The connection of the timing of his birth, parents' marital status, and his appearance is beyond me. I do know this, though. People make an awful big deal out of their physical attributes when they don't even look any different than a fetus. What's the point if you are going to be soft and weak and helpless and then try to look like it too? They don't develop anything to be proud of like wings, claws, tails, gills, poisonous stingers or fangs, or best of all shells. Their physical strength relative to weight makes me embarrassed for them. They can't even detoxify their own waste, so they have to dilute it with huge volumes of water and spend hours peeing.

See, if turtles were as vain as humans, we'd have useful elective surgeries such as a teflon-coating of the plastron for smoother maneuvering across the ground. Well, females anyway. Males need to, how shall I say, have a high coefficient of friction to maintain a certain angle at certain times. They might go in for a good shell buffing on occasion, though, perhaps a remodeling of the supracaudal and marginal scutes of the carapace for easier burrowing.

But we aren't and we don't. We look old from hatching on, and don't feel the need to mess with nature. Close your eyes once in a while: droopy and bald and gray disappear for free, and suddenly firm and flowing and lustrous don't matter.

The price of sloth

I had the house to myself for a few days several months ago. Turns out Mr. Dalton fancies himself an amateur athlete and participated in one of those community let's-pretend-to-be-athletic-and-motivate-each-other-to-use-these-gym-membership-coupons-in-January-and-quit-by-February events. I heard all about it. Multiple times. I was bored of him telling the same story over and over on the phone, until I heard a new part.

He was describing some cramps, which was weird, because usually it's his wife describing cramps. “Should have trained harder. Now I'm paying the price of my sloth,” he said.

What? He has a sloth? I'm not the only non-human animal around here? He must keep it outside, since I've never seen it.

Then I caught on to yet another species-centric inaccurate facet of 21st century American English. I happen to have known a sloth once, and to associate him with slacker behavior is wrong and offensive. Just like it would be if I told DWD he's a lazy cracker. Wait, that doesn't fit the analogy at all...

So if DWD hadn't been acting slothful, he wouldn't have been in pain. Let me describe my sloth friend. He doesn't get from A to B as fast as those mid-west triathlon want-to-bes, and talking to him wasn't always an intellectual feast. But Sloth never stopped except to sleep. Just hung and watched and hung and ate and hung and helped sponge carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere with the cyanobacteria growing in his fur.

So maybe DWD's right. If he was exhibiting slothful behavior he wouldn't ever race around crazy trying to accomplish a list of goals that some guy on the television with extra shiny teeth and a nice suit said was important. He wouldn't have as much debt and wouldn't have to work as much and would have more time to climb trees. So he either wouldn't be trying to prove something to other humans in nasty spandex shorts, or he'd have more time to prepare and be cramp-less.

There's no way one turtle, as brilliant as she may be, is going to have an effect on cultural verbiage. But maybe I can nickname my friend so he's divorced from the tainted connotation. Here are some suggestions.

Pale-throated amenable
Brown-throated repose
Maned halcyon
Pygmy three-toed placid
Linnaeus's two-toed nonchalant

Tortoises at least get the “and the hare” story. Maybe some kid's book in the future will disseminate my genius and my friend's character to the masses with the title of The Amenable and the Rat Race.

Window to the world

I suppose giving Derick William Dalton a soapbox for his biased version of that last story won't hurt anything. As if we'd believe him.

In the meantime, I've been running loose in his house. The freedom is nice and the exploration is invigorating. The kitchen door has glass running nearly it's full height, so it's a great place for me to sit and enjoy the outdoors without subjecting myself to natural selection. Not that I'm against it, even though it is why I'm twelve centimeters instead of twelve meters long, and am forced to eat worms and leftover salad and patter through the house instead of eating trees and mammals while tromping through the forest making the ground shake. Natural selection is a great idea for populations, but it doesn't interest me personally. Have I grown soft in my domestication? Don't have what it takes to survive and reproduce in the wild? No, but how to explain it... I suppose if natural selection were a religion, I would be an unrepentant sinner. If it were a genre of art, I would be the avant garde. French Foreign Legion, I'm AWOL.

But mostly I'm at the window to watch the hummingbirds. Talk about natural selection. I can't tell if their behavior is from an inferiority complex over their size, or if they just like being small and zippy, with nothing to prove to anyone. Except to reptiles of course, but they fell off our wagon millions of years ago.

DWD put the feeders up on purpose as he likes the twittering and buzzing and iridescence. It was annoying at first. And I have to admit, as hard as that is to do, I was jealous as they hovered and moved faster than I could keep track. Luckily, my shell protects my psyche as well as internal organs. I get bitten, I laugh. Fragile little hummingbirds get one mistake. Ever.

I couldn't make out the twittering, so I started making up dialogue as I watched them eat.

“Then he says (slurp slurp) 'Let's hang out. (slurp slurp) I'll show you a flowering elderberry bush I found.' (slurp slurpee slurp)”

“Oh (sipsipsip) honey, (sipsipsip) that's so romantic! (sipsipsip) What did you (sipsipsip) do (sipsipsip) after?”

“Nothing (slurp slurp). Didn't go at all (slurp slurp). My ex came zooming out of a tree (slurp slurp) and it was a who's-beak-is-longest contest (slurp slurp) after that. They both forgot all about me (slururururp).

Which makes me wonder why they don't help each other out more. The females seem to get along, several drinking at the same time. But then a male chases them all off and spends more time watching his back than drinking himself. Two males never bond at the watering hole. They could learn a bit from the humans that way, but then they might have a harder time with the reproductive part of natural selection. Instead, it's action sequence aerial dogfights nearly all day. That part kept me interested until I got motion sickness.

Unless it's all a game. The males don't have to produce eggs, so maybe they aren't under the same calorie demands. The females want genes for their young from a guy who looks like he'll never make a mistake, so the males could spend all their time chasing each other around and the one who doesn't starve gets all the action. Maybe the females like getting chased. It burns off their energy so they can eat more. Perhaps the males pretend to chase each other around when the females are looking to impress them. Maybe they find a lookalike and one eats while the other flirts, then they switch off and split the rewards. Or maybe they switch off then, too.

Either way, there are about a dozen of them out there flying around like they haven't a care in the world, and the more I watch the more I get depressed. Maybe my shell's not as thick as I supposed. I'll outlast them like I did the rats, but that doesn't make me feel any better just now. But the forecast of four days of heavy rain does. Fly around in that, hummingbirds.

Busted, you cold-blooded bimbo.

For the record I am not lazy. The appropriate term is busy. This is Derick. The William Dalton guy. Shelly forgot to log off, and now the world will know the truth. For example, Shelly makes the Vulcan live-long-and-prosper-sign more than I do, even without an opposable thumb, so she can't give me grief over anything relative to sci-fi nerdiness.

Don't let her fool you about the bath, either. She will sit and blow bubbles (both kinds) for hours if I let her. And here's not very ladylike for you: she likes to squirt water out her nostrils. I have to admit, it is quite impressive. I've tried to mimick her and haven't had nearly as skillful  a result.

So, back to busy. Shelly's parenting skills, along with those of all turtles, would warrant intervention by some government agency. Worse, she doesn't even have kids. At least none that I know of. Or that she knows of. Am I being species-ist? Is it unfair to judge all turtles by the actions and words of a polysyllabic sharp-witted hard-shelled slow-moving worm-eating dirt-digging shade-seeking floozy who will say yes to any male of the right species? Probably. Because I pay the internet fees and buy the worms and dirt and hire those males. (Yep, you heard me, Shelly. I hired every one of those guys.)

But she's right about one thing. My children don't always wash their hands after pooping.

A Bone to Pick. Or Gnaw.

Lately the Ringo drums have been replaced by Derick William Dalton and his wife laughing while watching the murder mystery show Bones. They also ooh and ahh over the human remains, dried and dessicated, soggy and putrescent, burned crispy, or in a post-woodchipper amorphous mess on the table. To be honest, they just make me hungry. They turn loose all those crunchy sweet beetles to clean the bones and I drool. Sometimes the bodies come in with juicy fly larvae on them, and I feel rumbly in my tumbly. On occasion they show remains before being discovered and they have crows or kitties or sharks or crabs taking a nibble. Here I get jealous first, and then hungry. Sure I love humans, but that can be taken two ways.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. I really don't know how humans taste. Not for lack of opportunity. However, when I get past my culinary attraction to the remains, I note one of the underlying conflicts of the series: science versus religion. As an animal, and a reptile what's more, I am in a uniquely objective position to comment. The rats in the terrarium next to me in the pet store long ago would have said "position to be judgemental", but they long since died of old age and I'm still around. So I don't give a rat's you-know-what and neither do they.

What the writers describe as science in the Brennan-Booth debates is really atheism. Science is about what's measurable. God isn't, so he (or she or it or them) is non-disprovable. As lack of evidence is not evidence of absence, atheism isn't science but a valid religion. It's based on belief in an unprovable absence. The writers don't need to adjust the conflict, because it works well. They need to change the labels so -

Oh, sweet! This episode is about a saltwater floater! That gives the skeleton such a delightful bouquet and softened texture to the palate, adding a lightly abrasive crust and a piquant marine aftertaste.

The difference between psychiatry and dermatology? Lipstick.

I'm often fascinated by the facial features of humans. Specifically, how much more they can communicate than a reptile. See, here's what I can say: eyes open, eyes closed. That's I'm watching you, I'm not. I can't say I'm watching you because I think you are a good-for-nothing crook. Well, I could be saying that, but it looks identical to when I say the curve of your plastron is a total turn-on and I want you to fertilize my eggs. Do you see the problem? And do you see why male box turtles have had to evolve long rear claws to hold open the female's shell in the back? You hairless pink monkey girls think you have a hard time commuicating with your mates. Did I say pink? I meant pink and brown and tan and olive and - well, you get the idea.

Binocular vision seems like an interesting concept. If you don't mind people sneaking up behind you. I see Derick William Dalton's kids try this on each other once in a while. The problem is, they always giggle before they pounce. I suppose it's kind of cute, but how does he expect them to survive in the wild like that? One little giggle, zero point eight seconds, that's all I need to close up shop. Then who's giggling? Me. From inside my fortress. Of course, eyes on the side, of which I'm very fond I'll have you know, would be more efficient without the bulk of the rest of my turtleness. I'm not complaining about my figure. I am quite comfortable with my body shape, and Animal Planet with all those half-starved zoo models will not injure my self-image. Does that Russian tortoise really think she's attractive with glistening mango juice on her face? And the way she sticks her back legs out of the shell much farther than is comfortable? That's not biology, that's just a floozy show. Besides, the size of my shell doesn't matter. My neck is long and flexible, and I can easily peek around behind it.

Here's what I wish I did have, though. Lips and a dimple. Then I could smile, the dimple would dent into my right cheek, and I would be adorable. More adorable, I mean. The lips, on the other hand, aren't for what you think. It has nothing to do with food or affection, only communication. Picture this: eyes open, red lipstick. That means hello. Eyes open, red lipstick, and dimple: let's be friends. With the eyes closed, there are so many possibilities. With a hiss or two thrown in, I have an anthropologically recognized language.

Blue lipstick? Interesting possibilities for meanings. I'll have to read up on my Mary Kay and Sigmund Freud and get back to you.