Laughing Tortoise

CHARLOTTE h s been with us now for three weeks and her charm good temper and adaptability are unfailing, but now and then I get the nasty feeling that she is laughing at me. and we none of us like to be laughed at, even by a tortoise. I am told by an expert who happened to visit us a short while ago that Charlotte is exceptionally good-looking. She is of compact size, has a beautifully marked and coloured shell and bright eyes. She and held likes having her hand and above all things she adores being whistled to. If she has withdrawn into her own particular solitude 1 have only to whistle, and out her head comes almost at once while she waves time with her two hands.
It is a charming sight and takes m me back in memory to sundown in the Karroo, and the lizards who would appear as if from -nowhere if one sat quite still and whistled
1 quietly and continuously. There they stayed, heads stretched up and ge eyes fixed on the strange creature who had invaded their own particular kopje/ but apparently wished them no harm. I can understand that lizards quickly become tame in captivity though personally I should hate to keep them in this way.
Take Toads . .
rjr HE friendliness of reptiles, cold-blooded as they arc, has always been a source of wonder to me. Take toads: they are really companion able if one has thg right method ofapproach. Speak in caressing tones
to a toad and he will allow you to scratch his head, and even accept food—such as ants or small flies—that you may have been agile enough to catch for him. Some years ago we had a toad that made frequent appearances in our garden, quite unafraid of any of us who went up and spoke to him, and who, when the weather was hot, gratefully accepted a bath in a tin plate filled with water and sunk just below ground level so that he could lurch comfortably into it.
Due North Ds UT to return to Charlotte: I am a us little anxio about her because June being their mating season, tortoises now become very active n and can make off at a extraordinary speed and will tunnel under most wire netting or the sides of a pen, and already I have noticed that she quickens her pace when my back is turned and resents being brought back again. Having referred to this peculiarity of tortoises some years ago, in this same column, mentioning the fact that an escaping tortoise always .heads North, I received a letter from a reader which is still in my possession and from which I am sure she will not mind my quoting. Her pet—Bill by name—had dug under some wire netting and had been missing for three days before he was brought home by owner wer of a dog that had found a him in a ditch more than mile away "He had crossed the main road, the public gardens, a thirtyfoot railway embankment, crossed the line and descended the other side, and he had made a straight course due North the way. ay. He seemed very pleased to get home." Bill's appetite, she told me. was insatiable: as well as spinach, parsley, cabbage, lupins, cherries, strawberries and loganberries, he
a
drank lot of milk, "loved dry cereal patent foods out of a packet, liked cake and grovelled
must have been for bananas". He rather expensive to keep. JULIAN HOLROYD.
C.T.S. Pamphlets
New Catholic Trutb Society pamphlets include "A Witness of the Invisible"—the life of BI. Mother Mary of Providence, Foundress of the Helpers of the Holy Souls, by Marie Rend-Bazin, and "Cruelty to Animals", by Dom Ambrose Agius, O.S.B. Both 4d.