above me. Not kin, not even kind. Yet near enough 

 in nature to know that she is on the point of death. 

 Pupils as dark as mine, as reflective, as pooling. I 

 cannot say that she sees me. Already looking far 

 within. A bright film comes over her eye. A fall of 

 cobwebs against the sun. Legs arch and tense, and in 

 the grass behind her she posits a single egg. Then 

 dies. Sinking to rest on her tiled underbelly. 



The egg Hes inanimate. The limbo of her breed. 

 On that African island, far away, it might have 

 hatched some months from now, if it had survived 

 predations of the nest. Here it can only spoil. Mis- 

 guided by the aberrations of this climate. 



Just another small corpse. Ten and a c]uarter 

 pounds when weighed. What makes her difterent 

 isn't her beauty or her scarcity or the distance she 

 traveled in order to die here. It is this. The hu- 

 mans meant her to live. 



Mr. Gilbert White, better than anyone, could 

 guess what a probable surfeit of life lay before her. 

 At his work-table, he clears the contents ol her 

 body. Any faint regret undone by the habit of the 

 knife, the disassembly of such an interesting crea- 

 ture. Finds thirty eggs waiting. Cleans the carapace 

 111 the water-tub. Dries it carefully. Daubs the inte- 

 rior with one of his preserving concoctions and 

 sets it on a shelf to dry. Then tea. 



What will become of her shell? For a time it will 

 stand for the whole tortoise — that lustrous being — 



in the memory of those who saw her living. In a 

 Madagascar clearing. On a sunny Hampshire grass- 

 plot in the month of July in the very last moments 

 of her life. Then the shell becomes a curio, an un- 

 common object of unusual beauty or interest. Sep- 

 arate from the identity of the creature who grew it 

 and wore it. Testimony to a type, not an individual. 

 Perhaps it enters one of the grand apothecary shops 

 that humans call museums. Exhibited to the curi- 

 ous at half a guinea a head. 



In dying her sex became manifest. Not by com- 

 parison to the male of the species. My own case is 

 far less unequivocal. Nest-making devoted to per- 

 sonal hibernation. No eggs buried 

 under the monk's rhubarb or hidden 

 at the foot of the muscadine vine. 

 No seasons of the kind the mares 

 enjoy, heat of the bitches, fervor of 

 the gilts coming into their own. 



And so Mr. Gilbert White has 

 always supposed that I am male. Per- 

 haps she would sound awkward for 

 a tortoise. For the Timothy that Mr. 

 Henry Snooke bestowed upon me 

 so long ago in Chichester. A fool- 

 ish assumption, a giving in to allit- 

 eration. Perhaps Mr. Gilbert White 

 IS also misled by the extravagance 

 of my adventures. Perhaps a sym- 

 V pathetic assumption of companion- 

 I ship between us. 



Timothy I have been this half cen- 

 tury and more. Timothy I shall be 

 forever after, thanks to Mr. Gilbert 

 White's scribbling. But female I am 

 and have always been since that mo- 

 ment in the egg decades ago. Female I 

 was in that ancient country. This cli- 

 mate, this England, has neutered me. 



<^ i icket-gate stands open. No one by. What is 

 VAi' there to deter me? No surtout to pack. No 

 mare to saddle. No instructions to Mrs. John 

 White. No guineas or bank-notes to tuck into my 

 tiled waistcoat. Out I go. Leaving only questions 

 behind me. 



"How?" The wicket-gate. 



"Where?" The bean-field just short of the 

 Pound Field. 



"Why?" Above all, why? 



Why is two questions. How could I leave such 

 a paradise? After everything we gave you. Needs 

 provided for. Immoderate safety. Kindness, even 

 affection of its humans. 



But also: what impels me? What spurs me on? 



46 



NATURAI lllsroRY February 2006 



