Steves tears

My beloved called to me to come and see Steve’s
tears, he was crying on TV; Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Man,
and they weren’t crocodile tears. Harriet had died,
Steve could not contain his tears and freely cried,
which shouldn’t surprise, he wears his heart openly,
but Harriet’s demise was as cruel a testimony to man’s
inclement idiocy as you’d ever get. Harriet was 176
years of age; impossible you say, patently ridiculous,
no one lives that long, well you’re wrong. Harriet was
a dome-shaped Galapagos tortoise, among the keys
to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, and she’d been a guest
at Australia Zoo. It is possibly true that Charles Darwin
took her as an egg or infant tortoise from Alcedo, Isabela
or Santa Cruz to England, and after that sojourn,
around 1860, she found her way back to become
a fixture at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. Then
most recently the Zoo. Harriet was a living link to
our profligate past as well as a credential we are
going to find essential for admission to a future
we may have already sold our rights to.
I squirm when I read how her brothers and sisters fed
sealers and whalers who raped the seas, stored alive
for months on their backs in stinking holds of leaky ships
because of an evolutionary slow rate of metabolism.
Nothing quite like keeping your steak alive…
You’ve survived the cliché ‘brink of extinction’ before
and lived to slaughter new generations of ancient myths,
but Harriet’s kind has survived, only just, in small numbers
in the Galapagos because of the Charles Darwin Foundation.
Would that we could extend their tenure from the islands
to the seas and stop the rapacious Japanese
from killing our whales.
© I.D. Carswell

Australia Zoo on Queensland's Sunshine Coast is mourning the loss of the country's oldest captive creature. Harriet, a 176-year-old giant Galapagos tortoise, was the star attraction. She even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. Senior vet Dr John Hangar says it appears she had a heart attack."Harriet sadly died last night after, thankfully, a very short illness," he said."She'd been sick yesterday with, in effect, heart failure. She had a very fairly acute heart attack and thankfully passed away quietly overnight."

Dr Hangar says Harriet has been credited with helping develop Charles Darwin's scientific studies."It's thought she may have been taken off there by Charles Darwin," he said. "She's spent a period of time in Britain and found herself at the Botanic Gardens in Brisbane from about 1850 or 1860 onwards and eventually she found her way up to Australia Zoo." source: ABC


Wild Things - Giant Galapagos Tortoise
The Galapagos Islands are named for the 250,000 giant tortoises that lived on the islands - "galapago" in Spanish means saddle and refers to the tortoise shell. Today, only 15,000 of these giants are left.
There were 15 subspecies, although only 11 still exist today. They have become extinct because of overhunting, and the introduction of goats, pigs, dogs and other animals which trample or eat the tortoise eggs and compete for food. Most like the upland areas of the large islands because of the humidity, grassy fields and ponds. The largest populations are in Alcedo, Isabela and Santa Cruz.
The 3 TypesThe Galapagos tortoise comes in three versions, which are distinguished by the shape of their shells, sizes, colors and behavior:
1. Saddle-Backed: Mostly found on the lower drier islands. They have raised shells, long necks and limbs.
2. Dome-Shaped: Found on the upper parts of the islands, where plant growth is dense and thick. They have round shaped shells, very short necks and limbs.
3. Intermediate: This third race is a mix between the two described above.
Some of the most impressive facts about the Galapagos Giant Tortoise is that they keep growing for 30 to 40 years, reaching almost five feet. They also weigh about 500 pounds. These are the largest tortoises in the world. In general, they are the longest living of all vertebrates (animals with backbones). Because of their life span, it's possible that some of the old-timers in Galapagos today hatched about the time of Darwin's visit (1835).
The oldest giant tortoise on record lived 152 years. Reliable records of tortoise life spans aren't available yet because people haven't been observing them long enough.
The FactsThroughout the 19th century, giant tortoises were valued by sailors as food supply. They discovered that these docile animals could live for months without food or water, flipped on their backs, and stacked in the cargo hold of a ship. This gave the sailors a ready source of fresh meat when there was no land in sight. Historical records show that tens of thousands of tortoises were collected from the Galapagos, Seychelles, Mascarenes, and other islands.
Only one male, Lonesome George, of the four extinct races exists. Previously he lived on Pinta Island, but is presently kept at the Charles Darwin Research Station.