Original Photograph from Flickr
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the tortoise
Wind your neck in, you tiny brained reptile. Is it true you can live for a year without a brain?, and for a month without a head? How is it that you live so long without a hippocampus?
The tortoise is its reputation: long living, slow, reclusive, with that hard protective shell. The oldest confirmed record is one hundred and eighty eight years but there are tortoises that are believed to have lived to two hundred and fifty years. This longevity may be due to the low metabolism, or the low metabolism may be what causes their slowness.
The tortoise mostly eat grasses and weeds, and needs little water. In the wild the age of the tortoise can be viewed in the rings on the carapace, because, like their companion in longevity: trees, rate of growth depends on the abundance of food, which in turn depends on the season.
The tortoise may have the reputation of being the oracle in certain cultures, which is very unlike the reality. The high point of communication between tortoises is the one form of communication: ramming. They ram in combat, fair enough, but they ram in courtship too.
All this said, welcome to the House of Masks, tortoise, my old friend
A gap in the fence
A solitary figure meanders along the...
An old tree stump
The naked ascetic woman with the TORTOISE...
A body of water
