The Termiteator

 We had a family tortoise that one day went missing .....

Manuela O Manuel?

... we searched but couldn't find it.

Then a few weeks later while looking for an errant football, I found it dead, tucked behind a neighbours bushes with a brick on its shell rope, which meant it had died of thirst or hunger or more likely the cold. We blamed a child associated with the house, for 'stealing' it (the plastic rope had been cleanly cut), then in the casual way of 8 - 10 year old boys just leaving it there to die, rather than admitting the theft.

That sad little tale still resonates with me today, decades later, because in the normal way of things, I would have still been looking after that tortoise today (and indeed, looking for a sanctuary for it in the event of my future demise). 

So you can perhaps understand why this story took my immediate interest ..... Nathalye De Almedia's mother had owned a tortoise named 'Manuela' back in the early 1980s, when she was around 8 years old. Her pet had 'disappeared' during a period when the family home was being renovated, and it was thought that she had wandered off or perhaps been accidentally killed during the upheaval. 

Then in 2013, Nathalye's father had died and the family were doing something of a clear out and to sort out their fathers possessions but while sorting through the attic, they found in a box with an old wooden speaker inside. Inside the box they also found a tortoise still alive .... “My mom arrived crying because she didn't believe it - they found Manuela!”

It was almost beyond belief that the animal, despite all the odds, had managed to find a way to survive for more than three decades locked inside the storage box. The best guess was that the poor animal had managed to survive from eating termite larvae, which were also found in abundance in the attic room. A tortoise can actually survive up to 255 years old, and can survive around three years without food and water .... so the occasional feast of insect larvae must have provided just enough of both to keep Manuela alive.

In a later update to the story, in 2023 nearly 10 years later, Manuela was still alive and enjoying a much happier life (and diet) – but was now called Manuel, as it turned out during a routine veterinary check that year, that the plucky tortoise was actually a male (Veterinarians apparently don't have trouble determining males and females based upon genitalia ... unlike the SNP and Labour Party).