A veterinarian places Tzvika, an injured female turtle, on a carpet at the Wildlife Hospital in the Ramat Gan Safari near Tel Aviv January 5, 2011. Now she's a cyborg turtle.
About two months ago Tzvika was run over by a lawn mower, suffering severe damage to her shell and a spinal injury that affected her ability to use her rear limbs. The wheels, attached by veterinarians at the Safari, elevate the turtle to keep the shell from being worn down and enable her to walk.
More here.
This story has a particular sweetness to it for me...
When I was a kid, my granddad, who lived in Queens and had a backyard the size of a postage stamp, had two pet box turtles for whom that postage stamp was a majestic kingdom. Tommy and Matthew. They'd lived there since my mom went off to university, maybe before. When Grandpa died, they were relocated to Indiana to stay with us, where they lived an indoor life, since we didn't have a fenced-in yard.
Tommy made his escape one day while Mama Shakes was gardening. A creek ran behind the neighborhood; it was there, we figured, he made his new home.
Matthew didn't seem to have any desire to leave his cushy life, where he didn't even have to do tricks or expend any effort to attain a steady diet of raw hamburger, fruit, and other goodies. But he did wander in the road one day, where he was hit by a car.
He was still alive, but a fucking mess. Mama Shakes scooped him out of the road to take him to the vet. My father gently suggested that maybe the best thing would be to put Matthew out of his misery. "I HAVE KNOWN THIS TURTLE LONGER THAN YOU!" she shrieked, terrifying and exhilarating me in equal measure.
The vet humored her. Wounds were cleaned and stitched. Matthew's shell, shattered into thirteen different pieces, was put back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and covered with some sort of clear, glistening epoxy to hold it all together. He was given fluids and drugs, to make him comfortable.
Matthew's back was broken. His back legs didn't work any more. The vet expected him to die.
But Matthew rested and healed. And then he scootched himself over to his bowl with his front legs, and carried on with life just as he had before. The vet said, "If I'd have thought for a second he'd survive, I would have taken a before picture!"
We took Matthew home, where he lived out the rest of his days, in shiny-shelled bliss.
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