Show and tell seems to be a consistent theme in my career. Reminds me of my days on the stage, albeit a very long time ago, and in school theatre. My younger brother wanted to be a conservationist at the time. As luck would have it there was a complete role reversal and the conservationist became the drama queen, while the drama queen turned to conservation!
On this particular occasion, I had told a good friend that I was hosting a group from the east. He jokingly told me about one of his excursions, with a group from Japan if memory serves. He said that every time his guests saw an animal they asked, “You can eat this – yes”? Little did I know this would become my reality.
Mr Woo arrived with a few people – too many to fit into one car. So we set off in convoy to see what there was to see. Unexpectedly, we came upon a tortoise crossing the road. I stopped to show the tortoise to my guests and give them the eco talk. At this juncture I must tell you that I only gave eco talks to people who knew less than me about the wild. I was reasonably new to the job and was still working out that zebras had stripes and giraffes long windy necks. I got back into my car and absently noticed the tortoise had vanished. I remember thinking it was an unusually fast mover. Our trip continued well into the evening and even at bedtime the tortoise’s fleet-footedness occupied my mind.
The following day we travelled in convoy to one of the jetties. The vehicles were abandoned to the care of colleagues and we all hopped onto the boat, binos in hand. In an inspired moment I asked one of my colleagues to search the one vehicle. This he dutifully did, only to find one shell-shocked (no pun) tortoise in the boot. He released the poor thing and left me to find a way to explain the “illegal” search and the creature’s disappearance.
“Mr Woo, your vehicle was searched by security and they found a tortoise in the boot. I have convinced them not to arrest you, for now anyway”.
“Tortoise, what tortoise?”, said Mr Woo. “I can only imagine it must have leapt into the car when we weren’t looking”.
I phoned my friend, “Hello D, you CAN eat it! Yes!”