Slow-Poke

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Journal Entry for August 2012
by Maggie

When I was a little pup, my mom used to tell me stories about all kinds of fanciful critters. I was never quite sure if they were real or a figment of her imagination. 

One of her stories was about a shellback and a jumper who raced each other across the countryside. The jumper must have had ADD because he kept getting distracted during the race. But the little pokey shellback diligently kept plodding along -- eye on the prize. And, well, you can probably guess how the race turned out. The shellback won!

Well, I have a story of my own about a real, live little girl I call "Slow-Poke." She is a shellback like in my mom's story. And my Alpha and the Girl came home with her one day. (I never know what to expect from those two!) When "Slow-Poke" arrived, she looked about like this — maybe a little bigger. 

tortoisetown.com 

My Alpha and the Girl made a home for her in our big room. It had water and plants and some little swimmers (turns out they were food for the shellback). 

Sometimes they would get Slow-Poke out and let her crawl around. Her little shell would peel every once in awhile and my Alpha seemed to draw great pleasure out of assisting her with this process. She also took care to make Slow-Poke's house bigger as she outgrew the old one. Pretty soon she was just too big for anything we had inside.

So my Alpha spent the better part of two days digging a water hole in the back and filling it up with rocks and plants and bigger swimmers. And Slow-Poke moved outside. 

She loved her new home. She got to eat mosquitoes and crickets and spiders. She loved listening to the sounds of all the critters out there. And she grew even bigger.

In the heat of the summer, Slow-Poke and my Buddy and I often lounged together at her water's edge under the big trees. She asked me often about the water she could smell down the hill from the house. Buddy and I told her all that we knew. Whenever we took our smoothskins for walks, we would pass by the water. It was bigger than 20 houses, I bet. Whenever we got close to it, big ribbeters would leap into it, making water splash everywhere. There were big tall plants growing out of it and shady spots where plants grew beside and over it. Slow-Poke loved to hear about the water.

Then one day it happened. I should have seen it coming. Slow-Poke ran away from home. I heard my Alpha say that she couldn't locate her. I had already sniffed the water hole and knew that she wasn't there. I had a sneaky feeling she had gone off to seek her fortune. 

She was gone for a very long time. It got cold. They put the tree up inside the house. They took the tree down. It snowed. It got warm. It got cold again. Again the tree went up and then came down. Again it got warm. What had happened to the little shellback?

One day last week, my Alpha came running into the house from the front yard calling for the Girl. Together we went out and I could hardly believe my eyes. There coming across the grass was Slow-Poke. Really. It was her. I bigger version to be sure. But it was her. My Alpha picked her up -- only this time it took two paws to hold her. We were all very excited.


my.chicagobotanic.org 

Slow-Poke stayed for about a day. Then, as mysteriously as she had done before, she disappeared into the wild. 

I used to wonder about her. What if a mouser got a hold of her? But now I know that she is a force to be reckoned with. She is not the hunted but the hunter. She is on equal ground with many of the other critters in her world. And she is running her race with great stamina. 

See you at the finish line, little girl.