There was a turtle that we found in the garden of the old main house when I was a little boy. The male servants drilled a hole in the rear part of its shell and tied it to a tree, but it managed to get away. Years later, when I was in college, we saw it on the compound once again but decided not to capture it. My nephews came upon it when they themselves were little. One of them placed it inside a cage but, as before, it escaped. It is many more years later, and additional buildings have been erected on the compound. The garden is no more, and we no longer see the turtle, though I know it did not perish, for it very well could outlive all of us. Could it have moved to a neighbor's garden? Could it have retreated to some secret, subterranean cavern?

Recently, while buying bird vitamins at the Shopwise pet shop, I saw an entire tank filled with turtles. It was fascinating to see them dive underwater and resurface to crawl on the rockscapes. I remembered the old turtle, and reminded myself how, like the shrimp that I saw in the Emerald Garden tank before I retired, unusually sentient turtles are.