RIP Lonesome George

And so tragic news has broken – Giant tortoise Lonesome George, last of his subspecies, has died.

I first encountered George’s story in Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of the World’s Most Famous Tortoise, which is the sad story of how you go about trying to save a species that just doesn’t want to reproduce. Looks like the inevitable has finally caught up with the Pinta giant tortoise.

I guess the whole thing raises important questions – how far should conservationists invest limited funds and resources into saving species that, apparently, don’t ‘want’ to be saved? A similar argument is made for giant pandas who, while cute, have to be among the most awkward animals on Earth.

But then, maybe humans should be paying penance – after all, George’s ancestors were hunted and eaten to the edge of extinction by our ancestors. It’s not like we don’t have a bad habit of blundering in and destroying the ecological balance of everywhere we go. A hundred or so years later and it’s our fault that the sole surviving member of a particular species is an individual with the sex drive of a brick. It feels like some sort of karmic irony.

I have no conclusions. I’m just sad and apprehensive about what we’ve done to our world.

Rest in peace George.

Cnut the Great and North Carolina

King Cnut the Great: ruler of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England, despite his successes, his legacy (in the UK at least) was pretty much obscured by the Norman invasion of 1066 and the death of his son, King Harold. Nowadays he’s best known for his role in folklore.

The story goes that he put his throne on the beach and commanded the tide not to come in. Obviously he ended up getting his feet wet, and the tale gets interpreted in one of two ways – either the futility of arrogance or as a king going out of his way to show that you shouldn’t claim power that only belongs to God.

A thousand years later, North Carolina has proposed a law that would prevent the sea level from rising (or, at least, measuring it in an inconvenient way).

I can’t think why I’ve linked the two…

World Turtle Day 2012

Ahh, turtles. And tortoises. Chilled out caravaners of the reptile kingdom. I’m glad you get a day to yourselves.

As a child, I had a pet tortoise. His name was Tommy, and while I was young I can still remember him slowly wandering around the garden and eating lettuce. After all, that’s what tortoises do.

Well, that and hibernate.

It was during his hibernation one year that Tommy… Disappeared. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but I recall being told that it was time for him to wake up, going out to his makeshift home, looking inside and…

He was gone. And I was shocked and sad but it didn’t make any difference, he had disappeared without a trace.

Mom and Dad came to the conclusion that he’d woken up early and simply wandered off. I don’t think that’s what happened, but nearly thirty years later they’ve stuck to that story, so I’ll believe them, or at least believe that’s what they believed.

There’s a part of me that wants to accept this story, and hold on to the idea that Tommy is out there somewhere, slowly exploring the world and munching lettuce. It’s a nice thought.

As an adult, I’m not so sure. I suspect theft – apparently there was demand for black market tortoises. I can’t prove this, of course, but I like to believe he was happy in his new home, and that he got over the emotional trauma incurred by his unscrupulous kidnapper being banged up for a string of unrelated but serious offences. After all, a man capable of stealing a tortoise is capable of anything.

I appreciate that I’ll never know the full story. But I just wanted to tell it, because today is World Turtle Day.

Vaya con Dios, Tommy.

Earth Day 2012

And so it’s Earth Day, but I confess I don’t get outside enough.

That’s something I’ve realised over the last few months. I’ve always labelled myself as an indoorsy type, but the more I think about it, the more I realise I’m impoverishing myself.

Part of this realisation was accidentally looking up at the night sky and realising that I could see Venus. The idea was a little overwhelming – being able to see another world while putting out the binbags? There’s something amazing about that.

Then there’s the sound of running water. It’s relaxing, peaceful. My parents used to own a caravan next to a river, and I loved being able to sit on the bank and read and pray in the silence. Haven’t done something like that for a long time.

And that reminds me – I once saw a mole there, digging away, and I watched him, fascinated, because the closest I’d come to seeing a mole before that was The Wind in the Willows.

Hippos. They fascinate me too. I was at the West Midlands Safari Park one and I was just mesmerised by the hippos. I can’t even explain why, because they were smelly and they didn’t do anything particularly entertaining, such as juggling, but still I stood there, staring at them.

Maybe there’s a simple explanation. Maybe it’s because, despite pollution and corruption and my naive discomfort with nature being red in tooth and claw, the world is a wonderful place. I’ve sailed close to Niagara Falls, heard the roar of the torrent, got my hair wet. It’s amazing and beautiful.

So no, I don’t go outside as much as I should. Maybe there’s a part of me that thinks I don’t need to. After all, I can see all the moles I want on the internet.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I go outside, I see something cool, I don’t embrace the moment, I whip out my iPhone and start filming. Up goes the barrier between me and the natural world. Who’d've thought that, even when I’m outdoors, I’m still indoors somehow?

But I compost and recycle and grow tomatoes, and that makes me feel good and noble, and that slightly cancels out the fact that I don’t know how half the food in my fridge actually gets there, not really. “A truck takes it to a shop” isn’t really an adequate answer. But then I don’t get outside enough.

I really should…

Happy Groundhog Day!

Today, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a groundhog will emerge from hibernation. Hundreds of people will watch as he looks outside, for if he sees his own shadow, it means we’re in for another 40 days of winter.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Serbia, a bear will also inspect the weather. If it’s sunny, he’ll sleep for another six weeks.

Elsewhere, in Portugal, Italy and the UK, old rhymes tell the same story – if the weather today is nice, then winter is sticking around.

We live in a scientific age. We’ve got satellites and meteorologists, we don’t need to hang around, waiting to see whether or not a groundhog gets freaked out by his own shadow. And yet the custom and its related folk wisdom are pretty widespread. Why is that?

Because there’s some truth in it. According to Wikipedia (I know, but I can’t find more scientific groundhog-related statistics right now, and besides, the whole point of this stuff is that it’s anecdotal), the custom correctly predicts the weather around 38% of the time, which actually isn’t that bad a hit rate for a rodent.

The theory goes that, if the groundhog can see his shadow then it’s probably a clear day and therefore probably colder; a mild day means more clouds and therefore spring is drawing closer. And yes, there are plenty of other variables but it’s not a bad rule of thumb.

A similar tradition exists in the UK around St. Swithin’s Day – if it rains on 15 July then there’ll be rain for the next 40 days as well. The rationale behind this is that the jet stream settles into a steady pattern around mid-July, and can therefore give a good indication for what the weather will be like for the next few weeks.

Sure, none of this is particularly scientific; it doesn’t matter. All this weather lore points to something else – Back in the day, being able to read nature was an important survival skill; now most of us are isolated from the natural world, armed with fridges and thermostats and streetlights. Of course we like the idea that a groundhog can predict the coming of spring; it brings us together with our communities and their traditions and forgotten knowledge.

And so I’m looking out my window and guessing it’ll be a longer winter. And I may well be wrong, but making the effort feels right as I look at the sunshine and feel the cold.