Sunday, 23 May 2010.
the best turtle to ever live.
See, there are pets who are just pets, and there are pets who...aren't just pets.
Since I have both-- have had both-- I think the difference is fairly easy to distinguish.
Pets who are just pets exist as an afterthought; you feed them and play with them and do your duty by them, but in the long run you could go a week without them and never notice.
And then there are the pets with a special place in everyone's heart, the ones that get pride of place in every kindergarten stick-figure portrait of a family. The family mascot, everyone's favourite animal, the one with a formidable stack of funny stories to its name, the quintessential first stop on the house tour. The ones that are loved.
We all loved Digby.
We loved her when we first saw her, a smallish dark-green turtle my mother had bought from some shady pet-dealer with a Hong Kong public housing bathroom full of reptiles.
And when she ate our goldfish.
And when we had to move her into a plastic toy bin in Hong Kong, and when we set up a video camera in that flat so we could see her from Singapore.
And when we moved her down here, reunited at last.
And when we found out she was female, which was only when she encountered the veterinary team at Customs.
And when we found out she was here under the wrong species' certification.
(although that was always just a theory, not a fact.)
And when we adopted four abandoned red-eared-sliders to keep her company.
And when she kept escaping.
And when she and the other turtles dug up half the lawn here.
And when we had to carry her upside-down all the time to stop her from kicking us.
And when she took up sunbathing on top of another turtle.
And a few days ago, when my mother gave her a raspberry to eat, and she was too slow even to reach it before the others.
And yesterday, when we found another turtle swimming around desperately with her dead body on its back, as though trying to keep her- its?- head above water.
I always thought she was going to live long enough to be a problem.
Like, 'What are we going to do with this turtle now that we're all grown up and moving out?'
And that she'd always be there, because she always was.
I wish she were still alive.
I wish I'd fed her more, taken more photographs of her, even picked her up more.
It's just like part of the family is gone now.
I miss Digby.
We had her nine years.
By the end, she was a largish dark-green turtle.
A beautiful turtle.
A distinguished turtle, even.
And now...she's gone.
(I know this post seems childish, doesn't it, because a turtle is just a turtle, and pets die all the time, and what does it really matter to anyone? But Digby really matters- really mattered- to me. >__<)
{ 8:25 pm }
iPod 
new schoolbag 