Harriet, the 175-year-old tortoise died recently in Australia. It just happened that I celebrated yet another birthday around the same time. Now I’m wondering if that means that the title of the world’s oldest living creature has now been passed on to me? My speed does seem to be more of a slow crawl these days and (although I would like to think of it as a masculine weathered look) my visage seems to be wrinkling at an alarming rate.
Harriet was long reputed to have been one of the three tortoises taken from the Galapagos Islands by Charles Darwin on his historic 1835 voyage aboard HMS Beagle, although that has been disputed. DNA tests have proved her age but she came from an island that Darwin never visited, handing her the title of not only having been the world’s oldest critter but also the world’s oldest fraud. At least she never lied about her age, something I’m always tempted to do now. Why would she have to? She looked exactly the same in her younger days, which was more than a century and a half ago, as she did right before her demise. The only thing that changed was – she gained in size. She went from a tiny hand-held version to a gigantic rock of a tortoise with a middle so thick you could sit on it and ride around.
So if increasing girth is a prerequisite for longevity, it seems that I will definitely make it past the century-mark myself as I have no problem at all increasing my dimensions. Just tell me what the “goal” is and I can easily tailor my dining habits accordingly. You need 20, 30, 50 pounds? No problem, I am the “can-do” type of person who will take care of this task with the appropriate amounts of peanuts, cheeseburgers, pizzas and a variety of creative eating techniques to accommodate whatever goal you have in mind in order to make it to the ripest of old ages possible. Good ole Harriet though, allegedly became gigantic without ever chomping on a single piece of cheesecake. Instead she supposedly only fed on veggie-type health food. I have no idea how that can be done. Who here today can testify about what she consumed one hundred years ago anyway? She outlived them all and more than likely, being the smart cookie she was, she ate up all records that showed her cheating on her diet.
Harriet never seemed to worry about wrinkles (I wonder if this feat alone, worrying about wrinkles, will produce just that – more wrinkles.) Besides, spending most of your day in close proximity to seawater will make you look like a prune, whether you worry about it or not. And it seems that those who might have been bothered by Harriet’s looks were not around long enough for Harriet to fret about what they were thinking. Living in the fast lane, it also didn’t seem to bother Harriet much since she seemed to saunter through life in slow motion. I wonder if she ever kept a diary. How interesting it would be to hear firsthand experiences from someone living almost through the entire duration of modern history.
Maybe it would read like this: That Thomas Edison was a decent fellow. Too bad he didn’t stick around for very long, he could have been a movie star... World War One was a terrible experience. It took me that entire period to make my way from the kitchen to the living room… Today the computer crashed. What was the name of that blacksmith who outfitted President Lincoln’s horse with excellent shoes? I’m sure he could fashion a sturdier one…
Even if she didn’t keep a diary, there are quite a few things she could teach us. For one thing, it seems to be of extreme importance to call a comfy home your own, even if it means, as in Harriet’s case, that you carry it on your back. Then, most importantly, no matter how frantic everyone gets around you, all you have to do is grow a thick skin and outwait them.
Wolfgang Niesielski
Humor Columnist
WriteWolfgang@yahoo.com
