The Horror of the Tortoise from Underground

Along time ago, I was always fascinated by a tortoise a friend of mine had found while digging a vegetable garden in the backyard to his home. What on earth had the small tortoise been doing underground for what must have been untold years, it was alive, but didn't seem to be able to make its head come out of the shell, it must have been seized in the retracted state from being unable move it at all for so many years. I did not understand how it could be possible but there it was.

I remember I went to his house to visit once, I was teenaged, I went to his house to visit. No one answered the door though I felt that he really was there but was not answering the door because I was a nuisance visitor I suppose.

Then, thinking I was probably being paranoid in thinking that, I went to where the tortoise was, near the barbecue. I tried to make it's head come out of the shell it wasn't easy. It seemed to be resisting fiercely so I kept pulling harder and still harder with childishly unaware curiosity and no thought of what I was doing to this creature until it's spine gave way and its neck broke. It's head was out now but the tortoise was clearly dead. I pushed the head back in when I realised what I had done and I replaced the tortoise where I picked it up from.

I immediately left and returned to my home.

Then a week later the fellow who owned the tortoise looked at me in an accusative manner and said the tortoise was dead, Somehow it's neck had been broken.

The horror of the incident lives on in my mind I mean how would he have known it's neck had been broken did he do an autopsy, no he must have been watching me do it but unable to stop me because he had been in hiding, what a horrible dilemma.

I must write it in my blog .

Try to atone

Though I can't be punished enough.

But how could the tortoise have lived buried in the back yard of a house
how could it be for untold years it did not dig it's way in,

I can only imagine it had been in some reptilian hibernation of some sort, or it ate when an insect or worm would randomly tunnel into the tortoises head space underground.

It's head was just permanently bent at the neck stuck in it's shell. It probably wanted to put its head out for a very long time. It probably wanted its head out of the shell especially now that it could see light.

Maybe I gave it a few seconds outside its shell before I killed it. I don't know but the memory haunts me to this day, out of all the horrors I've seen and done, this one stilltroubles me some 30 years later.

I was a child, I was stupid, I an insufferable nuisance, what can I do, there was no plan there was no reason. I'm only a man.

I'm only a man.