archelon
cousteau
archelon
Well I’m off to Japan for a couple of weeks. But before leaving, in honour of the Japanese tradition of cleaning house on New Year’s, I decided to change the swamp water in the aquarium that currently takes up most of our living room. This is the home of Cousteau, a fifteen-pound Florida softshell turtle, who has lived with us ever since she was a hatchling the size of an Oreo cookie.
“Well, if she gets too big you can always eat her,” was the kindly warning from the Chinese proprietor of the East Vancouver fish store where we bought her, over a dozen years ago. At that time we laughed it off. Now, I’m not so sure.
tank cleaning time
Cousteau is increasingly resembling a small dinosaur and if her growth rate doesn’t slow down she might start taking after her late Cretaceous cousin Archelon whose remains I once photographed at Yale’s Peabody Museum. Even some of Cousteau’s non- extinct relatives are known to reach enormous size. The highly endangered Asian species, Rafetus swinhoei, attains a weight of over 140 kg. There are only six individuals known still to be surviving. An enormous specimen inhabiting Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake is regarded by the Vietnamese as a living god, reappearing from the murk from time to time, during periods of great import to the Vietnamese people. As for Cousteau, she has appeared again from the murk also. Now that her view, for the time being, is once again unobstructed, she is pressing her nose against the glass in the direction of the television whenever we watch the nightly news. While her sad reptilian eyes appear to be taking it all in, I wonder what she is thinking?
