Toby the Tortoise
I can't remember how old I was the first time when I was told my mother had to go into hospital to have an operation, but I am sure it was before I started school at the age of five. I hadn't been apart from my mother before and I missed her badly, so to cheer me up Dad gave me my first pet, a tortoise. All that I wanted was for my mother to come home and I think I must have neglected to look after the tortoise as it died within a short time and my father buried it in the garden. I had seen my father burying seeds in the garden and after a few weeks had passed plants had grown out of the soil. I began to wonder what would grow when you buried a tortoise, maybe a tortious tree?
After a few weeks of checking in the garden where my dead pet was buried and finding no sign of anything growing I must have realised I was expecting too much.
Several years passed before I was given my second pet, another tortoise. This one was much more attractive with a beautifully patterned shell and I loved him straight away. I called him Toby and fed him juicy dandelions and clover. As a special treat I fed him green peas that he was very fond of, but I had to be careful as Tobies' head shot out quickly from his shell when he saw a green pea and he sometimes accidentally bite my fingers and that hurt me very much. My pet had a little hutch in the garden surrounded by a fence of chicken wire to sop him running away, but sometimes he would burrow a hole underneath the fence and we would usually find him gorging on lettuce or strawberries in the vegetable garden. Strawberries were Tobies' favourite food.
One day when Toby was missing I found him in the garden of a house along the end of our street where some painters were working. One of the men said he would make it easier for me to find Toby when he went missing and painted on top of his shell a white circle with a red cross over it.
Each year before winter we put Toby in a wooden box full of straw and when he was ready to hibernate he burrowed down into the straw and we wouldn't see him again for several months when the weather began to become warmer. One winter time my parents said they could only get straw to get for Toby's box, but that would keep him warm just as well. Unfortunately they were wrong as at the end of winter Toby did not reappear. I waited until winter was well past and then pushed my hand down into the straw and pulled Toby out to find he had died. I was very sad and never replaced him with another pet.