Avril, my friend in the UK, recently purchased some of my sterling silver turtle earrings and wrote me a little of her “terrapin history” to explain her interest…
“We had a couple of red eared terrapins given to us by mum in law many years ago. One got lost in the garden when we were trying to get some sunlight on them to strengthen their shells. We were distraught; a fortnight’s intensive search was fruitless.
So we replaced the missing creature, added to them until there were 4. They grew into 3 ever increasingly large aquaria. OK. Fast forward 10 months… first halfway warmish day. My husband Norman, walking down the garden path, found a tiny shell of missing terrapin and then headed for the railway embankment at the end of garden, to quietly lay it to rest with out upsetting me… and a head slowly emerged! He had been under the compost heap for almost a year! It weighed nothing at all, and after a cliffhanger week, started to eat and survived! Had a party on the strength of it. Name immediately changed to Lucky.
The sequel to all that is that I had a huge career change, from that of a perfumery chemist to self employed, opening a whole food shop, which we called Terrapin Station (Grateful Dead album title) as an icon of survival. Our shop survived 9 years, but we didn’t actually, er, sell much. However it was more of a community centre than a shop, and the back room was a musician’s jam space. We got a band together which was the precursor of most of our individual musical activities. So the Terrapin Era was quite formative for a lot of us.
Well, Mr. Green is still with us at 31, although the others have gradually demised. We have a turtle memorial corner in our garden, by a pond where they’re interred. So another tear jerker, sorry Merry, I’ll send you another tube of mascara.
Best regards, Avril.”
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