Why Can’t Humans Be More Like a Tortoise?
By Colleen O’Connor
Avoid the rush. Escape the dreary news and get to the San Diego Zoo’s 140th birthday for “Grandma” Tortoise!
Seriously, “Grandma” Tortoise is celebrating her 140th birthday on November 15th.
She is an “endangered species” from the Galapagos Islands. Only 15,000 of the 200,000 of these magnificent creatures remain on the islands where Darwinian “evolutionary” history began.
Even today, those ten Galapagos islands shelter only 12 remaining species of Tortoise.
Amid all those loses, The San Diego Zoo finds reason to celebrate their most famous elder, “Grandma” with a cake and all the trimmings.
Not that she, who weighs in at roughly a couple hundred pounds, and is known to have birthed hundreds of offsprings, needs the cake.
Think about it. Her weight is measured in the hundreds of pounds. Her incubation period is between 90 and 270 days. And she had birthed her young once every year.
She deserves a celebration. As do all the Tortoises.
Tortoises are non-violent. If there is an argument between these slow, lumbering creatures, it is settled by both combatants simply raising their necks. The taller one
wins! True.
Then came humans and the demise of the Tortoise. Reason for grief.
But, grieve not. “Grandma” and others, as endangered species, thrive at the San Diego Zoo.
And children flock to the free days in October to witness and marvel at “Grandma” and her offspring.
Why can’t humans be more like the Tortoise?
Look for Marya, the woman in charge of explaining the Galapagos Tortoise and Grandma’s 140th birthday.