Adventures of a Young Naturalist

Title: Adventures of a Young Naturalist
Author(s): David Attenborough
Release year: 2017
Publisher: Two Roads

Why in Database: A reminiscence book from author’s first nature expeditions. There are many turtle elements in it, as many as ten, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer fragments. We present them all below:

After several days at Karanambo, we returned to Lethem. Slowly the animal collection grew and when, after two weeks on the savannahs, we flew back to Georgetown, we took with us not only our caiman, lying in a huge tailor-made wooden crate, but a giant anteater, a small anaconda, some fresh water turtles, capuchin monkeys, parakeets and macaws. It seemed a reasonable beginning.

By the time we were nearing Pipilipai, the village at the head of the river, we had bartered beads for macaws, tanagers, monkeys and tortoises as well as several unusual and brightly colored parrots.

Houdini behaved perfectly for the first half-hour; the curassow, tethered by a piece of string round its ankle, perched peacefully on the tarpaulin covering our equipment; tortoises rambled about the bottom of the canoe, parrots and macaws screeched amicably in our ears, and the capuchin monkeys sat together in a large wooden cage, affectionately examining one another’s fur.

Men and women lay in hammocks, crisscrossing from beam to beam; others squatted on small wooden stools carved in the stylized form of a tortoise.

Between the pavilions lay six turtles still alive, their fore-flippers cruelly pierced and tied with a thong of rattan cane, their dry leathery heads sunk to the ground. They blinked slowly, their weary glazed eyes weeping copiously as the laughing, chattering crowd swept round them. They would be slaughtered that evening.
The next day Mas took us back to the house. The courtyard was even more tightly packed with people than it had been on the preceding night. All were wearing their best clothes, the men in sarongs, tunics and turbans, the women in tight blouses and long skirts. The prince, the head of the household, sat cross-legged on a small platform chattering to the more important guests, drinking small cups of coffee and eating gobbets of turtle meat spitted on bamboo sticks.

We told him what animals we hoped to see—rheas, capybara, turtles, armadillos, viscachas, plovers and burrowing owls.

I found the first lodger for the bathroom one day when I was out riding on the camp shortly after a heavy rainstorm. The paddocks were waterlogged and in the hollows, wide shallow pools had formed. As I rode past one of them, I noticed a small frog-like face peering above the surface of the water, gravely inspecting me. As I dismounted, the face disappeared in a muddy swirl. I tied my horse to the fence and sat down to wait. Soon the face appeared again from the farther edge of the pool. I walked round toward it and was soon close enough to see that whatever else this inquisitive little creature might be, it was not a frog. Again it vanished and swam away beneath the surface, stirring up a cloudy line as it went. The trail stopped as the animal settled. I put my hand into the water and brought up a small turtle.
He had a beautifully marked underside, patterned in black and white, and a neck so long that he was unable to retract it straight inward like a tortoise, but had had to fold it sideways. He was a side-necked turtle—not a rare creature, but an engaging one, and I was quite sure that we could find room in the airplane for one so small and attractive, even if he had to travel in my pocket. The bath, half-filled, with a few boulders in the deep end on which he could climb when he was bored with swimming, made him an excellent home.
Two days later, in one of the streams, we found him a mate. As the pair of them lay motionless on the bottom of the bath, each displayed two brilliant black and white fleshy tabs which hung down from beneath their chins like lawyers’ bands. It may be that odd appendages, which their owner can move about if it wishes to do so, serve as lures to attract small fish fatally close to the turtle’s mouth as it lies unobtrusive and stone-like on the bottom of the pond. But our turtles had no need to use
them, for each evening we begged some raw meat from the kitchen and offered it to them with a pair of forceps. They fed eagerly, shooting their necks forward to engulf the meat in their mouths. As soon as they had finished their meal, we took them out of the water and let them wander around on the tiled floor while we used the bath for its more conventional purpose.

I half-filled the hand basin and transferred the turtles to it.

Our stay at Ita Caabo was only a short one. Two weeks after we had arrived, the company’s plane returned to take us back to Asunción. It had been a comfortable and fascinating interlude and we were sorry to go. We took back with us the mulitas, the turtles, a little tame fox given us by one of the peones, and unforgettable memories and film of ovenbirds and burrowing owls, plovers and rheas, viscachas and, perhaps most memorable of all, the giant herd of capybara.

He read it through out loud, in a wondering tone of voice. When he came to the armadillos, his brow furrowed and he reached down a bulky manual of regulations. After studying the index for some considerable time, he looked up at us.
“What are these animals, please?”
“Armadillos. They are rather charming little creatures, actually, with hard protective shells.”
“Oh, tortoises.”
“No. Armadillos.”
“Maybe they are a kind of lobster.”
“No, they are not lobsters,” I said patiently. “They are armadillos.”
“What is their name in Spanish?”
“Armadillo.”
“In Guarani?”
“Tatu.”
“And in English?”
“Strangely enough,” I said jocularly, “armadillo.”

Author: XYuriTT

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