9/3/02
Rasmiliya Sporny
ENG 101

Question: Think of a species of animal you have wide experience with. As hoagland does, describe these animals as distinct individuals and as common representatives of their species.

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Srilanka is a tear-shaped island known as 'The Pearl of the Indian Ocean'. Its a tropical island, teaming with all kinds of wildlife. It is not uncommon to have strange animals wandering into gardens, or having spotted geckoes chatting to each other in the middle of the night. The most unusual group of animals we have had in our house was a group of monkeys. They are the most ferocious animals I have ever encountered. They have reddish-brown feiry eyes and these teeth that look like they can rip out the arm of a man. When they run across the roofs of houses, it sounds like thunder, literally. There are more 'loveable' animals though, including elephants. They are such majestic creatures and they have very similar qualities to that of humans, in the way they care for their youung, mourn their dead and work together as a community to feed themselves. Their mouths are so pink and rather disgusting looking and they drool a lot when they are fed. Take it from me, its not pleasant to have your arm covered in elephant drool. Riding one is an experience I can't quite explain. Its scary, because you never know if the elephant will suddenly get angry and crush you to death. One thing I have noticed is if you look at an elephant's eye, you can almost tell what they are thinking. An elephant's eyes are so small compared to the rest of their body.

But I'm not going to write about elephants, because where I come from, they are a common topic and everyone sees them on a regular basis. I'm going to write about the reptiles that wander into my garden every once in a while. The "queen" of the garden is my pet tortoise, Ibbie(her original name was Angie Esiotrot, but was changed to Ibbie for convenienve). She trots around, grazing on the grass, or toppling over one of the 'forbidden' potted plants to devour the contents. The reason why many of the good plants are potted is in order to keep them out of her reach, a point which she doen't seem to understand.
She is about the size of a dinner plate, about ten inches long, eight inches wide and six inches tall. She does not fill everyone's stereotypical idea of what a tortoise should be. She is pretty fast and is able to run (which is actually speed-walking) from one place to another in a matter of minutes. She always seems to be in a hurry to get to someplace in time, like she has a mission she has to accopmplish befor the day is out. This mission usually involves the trip from the garden, to inside the house where the refridgerator is. She knows that there are vegetables in the vegtalble bin, which is inside the fridge. She even tries to open the door of the fridge by bumping her shell against it and even tries to crawl under it in a vain attempt to get to the vegetables inside. She loves beans. One whiff of a bean and she gears into 'super-trot' speed. She can actually walk in a straight line if she wants to. Her personality is a mixture of that of a pig, a goat (for her gluttony),a dog (for her affection) and a truck. A truck? Yes, truck. When she lowers herself to the floor, where she doesn't stand up, allowing the bottom of her shell to rest on the floor, she makes this sound like a truck does, like a loud sigh.

When she wants to be affectionate,or just plain obnoxious, she steps on your toes if you feet are on the floor. When she feels insecure, she comes into the house and finds a corner to hide herself or she'll lower herself on top of your feet. She likes toes, to bite that is. If she sees toes that have been painted red or pink, she always wants to take a bite out of them to see what they taske like. I think she can see color because she always gets attracted to the colors red and yellow. Red must remind her of the hibiscus flowers and bits of watermelon we give her to eat, and yellow must resemble the color of babanas, one of her favorite fruits. When she comes into contact with either of these colors, she stops, stares and then goes into this zombie-like tranze, where she just stares at the object with a look of sheer disbelief, like she is seeing the most beautiful sight in the world. But the a minute later, she snaps out of her tranze and rushes towards the object and sniffs it, then tries to take a bite of it. One day my best frien had worn a yellow dress when she came to spend the day with me and my tortoise followed her everywhere! And at one point when we were sitting out in the garden, catching up on the latest gossip, Ibbie trotted over, her eyes bright and wide, and looked at my friends dress and bit it! Not once, but twice, as she must have thought that it was a fruit that you had to bite really hard on to get a peice of it. It was so funny. Tortoises don't really have 'teeth' as such, they just have these rigid teeth-like protrusions situated on the top and bottom of their 'beak'. But if they do bite you, by accident mostly, it really hurts. Ibbie had nipped me on my finger several times, and there has often been small amounts of blood from where she bit it. It wasn't intentional, of course. If she is scared or doesn't wan to socialize, she either tucks her head and feet into her shell or she just hides in her 'corner, which is under a large peice of wood, which leans against the wall in the garden.

The most interesting thing about this tortoise is that she has so much life in her and is extremely curious. Her curiosity has resulted in her injuring herself. She tries to climb down the steps in the garden, but instead ends up rolling down them. We are always afrid that one of these days she'll crack her shell and die. Or if she falls down the steps and lands upside-down on her back, she could die. Tortoises find it very difficult to roll back to their correct position once they are upside down. At a time like that, they are extremely vulnerable to predators and can get dehydrated quickly. Due to he inquisitive nature, she has chipped and scratched her shell and has lost two toe-nails. But she is still as plucky as ever. The fun really starts when the 'visitors' start appearing in the garden. There are two chamelions, which are smaller than the regular chamelion and run faster. Srilankans call them 'katussas'. Well, they sun themselves on tree-trunks and on garden rocks, keeping one eye out for food-on-legs and the other eye out for predators. These reptiles are a bit wary of the oblivious tortoise who trots accross the grass once in a while, and if she gets too close, the lizards scuttle away. The squirrels are a bit cautious around Ibbie as well. They don't quite know what to make of this moving rock thats makes a lot of munching sounds. The baby monitor lizard isn't that afraid of Ibbie, but always keeps an eye on her, expecting her to jump out and bite the lizard's tail off. Ibbie has come nose-to nose with the baby monitor lizard (adult monitor lizards grow up to eight feet long and can kill at any given moment. Thieir tails are especially dangerous because when their tails lash out, they have such a force, that they can break a man's leg in half.). She and the monitor lizard usually stare at one another and Ibbie walks away, looking back at the lizard behind her with a suspicious eye.
My mother and I have this joke that if we looked at the animals in our garden through a magnifying glass it would look like something out of the prehistoric ages, with all these 'dinosaurs' roaming about. Its another world.