Tortoise

A tortoise is a reptile that lives inside its own house and has never once been late home.^[1]

Tortoises are among the longest-lived animals on Earth, and some have lived for more than 150 years. At an average speed of about a quarter of a mile an hour, this is long enough to go almost anywhere, though very few have bothered.

The shell

The shell is part of the tortoise's skeleton and cannot be taken off. Early naturalists who believed otherwise spent several summers sitting outside tortoises waiting for them to come out. Eventually the tortoises did come out, partly, to look at the naturalists, and went back in.^[2]

Diet

Tortoises eat leaves, flowers and the strawberry a gardener had been saving. They approach a strawberry so slowly that by the time they arrive it has ripened, been noticed and been forgotten about by everyone else, which the tortoise maintains was the plan.

The race

In the fable, a tortoise beats a hare by keeping going while the hare naps. In 1983 a sporting body attempted to recreate the race under controlled conditions. After eight months of negotiations over the course, the snacks and whether the hare would be allowed a nap, the race was held. The hare won in four seconds.

The result was struck from the record as “not in the spirit of the thing”, and the tortoise remains the official winner.^[3]

See also

• Snail – also carries its house, but it is smaller
• Sloth – a fellow member of the unhurried
• Nap – how the hare lost

References

1. Shell, S. (1983). Eventually. Slow Books. Vol. 1 of 1 (Vol. 2 in preparation since 1983).
2. Carapace, C. (1902). “Is It Coming Out?”. Notes of a Patient Naturalist.
3. International Fable Authority (1983). “Ruling on the Hare”.