Mallory's Camera

In the piney woods behind the Carson & Barnes elephant sanctuary (100 acres, 24 elephants) Milo sniffed out an old box turtle. I would have left him there, but Ben – ever the reptile freak – promptly pocketed him and brought him home to show Robin. He’s been here ever since, seemingly happily esconced in a newspaper-lined box nibbling on bits of banana and green apple. Robin named him “Nimoy” which I guess means he’s now officially a member of the household.

Box turtles aren’t aquatic animals but they’re still true turtles, not tortoises, a determination you make strictly on the shape of the shell. Judging from his size, Nimoy looks to be around 40 years old. He was probably looking for a place to hibernate when Milo discovered him. He should live another fifty or sixty years. He’s a survivor – you can’t see it in the photo above, but there’s a big scar on his shell from where he probably got hit by a car ten or twenty years ago.

The giant Galapagos land turtle given to Captain Cook by the Queen of Tonga in 1777 didn’t go to that animal sanctuary in the sky until 1966. Nimoy could easily outlast me and all my F1 descendents.