Walking stories

October 17, 2024

There I stood, scissors in hand, teeth clenched, using every bit of power in my hands to gouge out the turtle’s eyes.  

 My husband said I shouldn’t begin this story, which is all about romance,  with that ferociously ugly image, because outraged animal rights people would come after me as though they were Scotland Yard and I were  Jack the Ripper.  “Ripper" seems a fitting word, though, because that turtle’s eyes were embedded so firmly in its forehead that I had to use all my strength to remove them. 

But I did it for love.  And I didn’t want this to the kind of saccharine story that would accompany a Facebook animal video of a kitten cuddling with a pit bull. 

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About a month and a half ago, I decided to put  Greenberg, who had been living the life of Riley – sniffing here and there, barking to express his innermost feelings, peeing in  unexpected places that he thought I wouldn’t notice –  to work.  I’d seen an online notice that the Campus for Jewish Living (which was called the Jewish Home for the Aged, until the dirty word “aged” got replaced with euphemisms  like “senior” and “golden”) would welcome volunteers with dogs.   The four-legged draftees would visit residents who’d indicated that they would be happy to have  canine visits.

Although he is sometimes barky to other dogs, I knew Greenberg was likely to make a friendly and eager drop-in guest.  So I signed up for me to attend an orientation session, and then for Greenberg to be vetted and okayed by the capable and organized guy in charge of the volunteers. 

The human orientation was a few months ago near the start of summer, when most all of the other orientees were high school students who seemed to be fulfilling some kind of community service requirement.  My life nowadays is without service requirements.   For me, volunteering is a way to build up good personal karma and thereby to avoid feeling guilty when I pretend that fasting on Yom Kippur isn’t important.      

In the training session,  I learned how to maneuver a  wheelchair into an elevator; when (almost always) to respond to a resident’s request by calling for a nurse; which of the several cafes on the premises were off limits to volunteers; and to limit my volunteer-day footwear to shoes with closed-toes. I studied a map of the place, which is sprawling and  includes separate  wings for people needing varying  levels of care.   Some residents are at the Campus permanently; some are there temporarily  recovering from medical calamities; and some are more independent, living  in an “assisted living” wing I have so far not visited.  Many were born in Russia and speak Russian only, but the place is non-sectarian, and a multiverse of people live together.

Because my curly-haired partner had not yet been vetted for his suitability for the job, I was Greenberg-less on orientation  day, as I walked amongst the small  herd of volunteers down long corridors that connect the buildings.   The place is large, spiffy and clean, its corridors shared by residents with canes, walkers and wheelchairs, snack-bearing visitors, mop-wielding custodians, scrub-wearing medical personnel with stethoscopes looped  around their necks,  and clipboard-toting social workers and administrators.

One place our guide pointed out  was a glass-enclosed terrarium, inside of which was a tortoise.  I would have called it a turtle, but a sign affixed to the outside set me straight:  Elliot is a Russian Land Tortoise, 80 years old.  I later looked up the species,  and the internet informed me that with proper care, such creatures can  live to a maximum of 60  years old.  The care at the Campus is obviously more than proper.  Elliot, like those celebrated ultra-senior yogurt-guzzlers of Azerbaijan, like those great great grandpas and grandmas of France and Japan, has made it way beyond his expected years. Maybe they give him a glass of red wine every night, and that explains his longevity.  Anyway, he’s a role model for residents. 

We always go to the Campus on Thursday mornings.  And apparently, just before our arrival, Elliot gets served his breakfast, a brimming plate of salad-like stuff.  So the first week that Greenberg and I showed up for work, the turtle, under the warming spotlight of his enclosure, was active, moving his food around on that plate, strewing it a bit over the floor of the terrarium.  Since Elliot is incapable of wielding a knife and fork, a lot of swinging around of his head, with mouth open to ingest what’s close, is involved in his fine dining experience.  In fact, he seemed to be eating with the same gusto that Greenberg applies to that activity when we’re on his home turf.

Maybe Elliot and Greenberg’s shared passion for the gourmand experience, unspoken but nevertheless strong,  was the common ground upon which this relationship was formed.   Maybe, on the other hand, the mutual attraction  was the strangeness of the Other.   Elliot has a hard shell, Greenberg has soft curls.  Elliot is cold–blooded, Greenberg, warm-blooded (and  truthfully, even a hothead sometimes). 

The dog never barks at the tortoise, though.  He stares, through the glass, as though he is a spouse  visiting an adored husband who somehow wound up in jail.  If Greenberg had cash on hand, he’d probably bail Elliot out, or at least ask if he wanted  him to call a lawyer.

The first time they laid eyes on each other, it was a done deal, a coup de foudre. We lingered for a few seconds, and then our duties called, and I had to drag Greenberg off to his appointed duties. He was reluctant to leave but he complied – he only weighs 13 pounds, so it’s easy for me to be the boss – and every time we moved from one floor to another, or from one building to another, he tried to pull me back, like a magnet to the north pole.

Week after week, his longing has intensified.  Parking isn’t easy around the Campus, so I usually have to leave the car a block or so away when I get there.  The moment I let Greenberg out of the car, he starts tugging.  While I  check in online at the Volunteer registration computer, he is pulling me out the door and into the corridor.   Although the birds in other glass cases positioned along the corridors are tweeting and fluttering their wings in hopes of attracting some attention, Greenberg gives them hardly a stare.  He is intent on one thing only:  Elliot.  

And over the course of a few months, Elliot has come to return Greenberg’s attention, a phenomenon I have captured in a romantic video that  I have attached to this essay.  If the glass weren’t between them, I wonder if Greenberg would be so quietly transfixed, or Elliot so fearlessly flirtatious.  

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Meanwhile, about those eyes:   A few weeks after I realized this passion had been ignited,  and a few weeks after I had started talking about it incessantly to my husband, we went to the flea market, a favorite Sunday treat.   Poking around is a solitary pleasure, so we always separate before we start strolling around to check out what’s there.

On this particular Sunday, with my dog’s needs in mind, I stopped at a stall that included among its wares a plastic garden ornament of a turtle.  Greenberg might love it, I thought.  Upon reflection, however, taste prevailed and I decided to save five bucks and pass it by. 

My husband had no such self-control.   When we were both finished shopping, and re-united for post-market show-and-tell, he said he had a surprise for Greenberg.  He reached into his tote bag and removed a stuffed turtle, just about the same size as Elliot.  

We waited until evening  to present the dog with this fine surprise.  He took to it as though it had been a real turtle, nosing it, sniffing it,  biting it.   I settled down in my  favorite reading place, a sofa in our bedroom, as the dog teased his toy, nibbled at his toy, and thrashed his toy on the way to trashing his toy.

Which is when I heard a kind of gritty grinding noise.  Greenberg was biting on something hard, and it was up to me, the dog-protector, to make sure it wouldn’t do him any harm.  I somehow pried the now slightly slimy  turtle from his mouth so I could do an inspection.  And there they were, two button-like bulging plastic eyes that he was doing his best to separate from the rest of the body.

I thought of a woman I’d once met at a party, who told me that her dog had died after ingesting a wire and plastic vegetable tie.  In addition to that totally calamitous scenario, I flashed on possible vet bills. So, with Greenberg glued to my side (“What the hell are you doing to my friend?”) I carried the turtle down to my work room, where, wielding a screwdriver and a pair of scissors, I removed his eyes.  

It was fairly late at night, I was alone in my room and no one knew I had done this. But it’s hard to describe how awful this made me feel, as if I had done something shameful, sinister. Weeks later,  I feel it important to stress that the blinding action was not the work of a mean mother-in-law declaring that the real Elliot is unfit for my beloved dog.  I wasn’t telling him to find himself a mate from his own species, or for that matter, from the opposite sex.  I was simply trying to protect Greenberg from perceived danger.

The eye-ectomy left the turtle’s plush cloth eyelids drooping and ragged, but when I shamefacedly returned the thing to Greenberg, the dog  hardly seemed to notice.  Immediately, he abandoned his ravaging of the head in favor of action between the turtle’s back legs, which I guess, had it been real, the turtle might have enjoyed.

In about a half hour, the carpet under our bed, an area we call the dog’s “man cave,” was dotted with synthetic white fluff. I cleaned it up, as well as fluff that had migrated to the dog’s bed.  Then, upon squeezing the turtle hard to make sure it contained nothing else dangerous to the dog, I discovered that  it seemed to have some bead-like material in its belly.  So I threw the whole thing away.  

 When Greenberg and I showed up at the Campus the next week, the dog rushed over to the terrarium. He put his paws up on the edge of its metal support, and stared.  And Elliot, who had been facing the back, turned around to see him, and came racing – a relative term when one is describing a tortoise – over.   The two seemed equally fascinated with each other.

 If the glass weren’t there,  I like to think they would throw themselves into each other’s arms and dance the tango.  Face to face, nose to nose, eye to eye.  Ain’t love grand?