My mojave desert tortoise, bless her heart, used to come to the back door of our house and scratch to be let in. She would then walk straight to the refrigerator door and wait for one of us to get her some lettuce from the crisper. After eating, she would then come into the living room and sit around while the rest of us watched tv. She would stretch out her front and hind legs hoping that one of us would message the soft parts hiding behind her armor. She also came to know my footsteps, and would slowly emerge from her burrow in the yard when I would go outside to play. This tortoise was over 50 years old when my father picked her up one day while she was crossing the road...I was 8. Somehow, the old reason vs. instinct dichotomy that we inherit from modernism just doesn't satisfy my wonder about this great creature I had the privilege of knowing. Being new to the desert in comparison (the town I grew up in wasn't even there before W.W.II vs. the 500 million years of tortoise culture there), it's too bad that we didn't have enough "reason" or "instinct" to know how to live in harmony with these creatures, since now their culture is endangered only sixty years after our arrival. No wonder I loved the existentialists back in college...humans are the "irrational" animal, par excellence! danne polk
