Tortoise-Sitting Goes Deeply Wrong

I must confess, I made the gravest mistake today. Folly is jollying off on a Hiding Weekend with the ‘Nervous Branch of the Girl Scouts’. Bench became dreadfully fractious on the yoghurt pot phone and threw a total hissy, and in my efforts to calm her, I was duly conned into aggreeing to look after Wesley.
Wesley is a tortoise.
Despite the name of my writings, I don’t fare at all well with these creatures. This particular shelled joy looks like Douglas Hurd when he’s pondering something very carefully.
It’s so frustrating, he doesn’t ‘do’ anything. Well, actually, that’s a slight untruth, he did at first. His head came out, he moved his mouth like an elderly man demanding sustenance, then retreated when he saw me. Now, he is dreadfully quiet.
Aunt Bench should have kept him, especially as he belongs to her daughter. Unfortunately Bench is at the spa this week with Aunt Claymore and Cousin Girda. Aunt Claymore is being waxed (head to toe), Cousin Girda is being waned, and Bench is having some splendiferous conditioning jollop carded into her beard by a Tibetan throat singer.
So I’m lumbered with a sedentary tortoise. He doesn’t appear to enjoy entertainment.
I decided to ditch the ‘flinging’ idea at two o’clock due to his look of total disdain, I don’t think he knows about the Arguineguin Tortoise Flingers. So, I put on La Tapatia radio from Mexico, in the hope he may welcome some light music. But he didn’t move. I performed shadow puppets, I made a batman mask by turning my hands inside out over my eyes. Nothing. I did the classic – here is the church, here is the steeple – but the ungrateful little boggart gave me nothing to work with.
So I thought – food.
I had flageolet beans with goat’s rue and tree bark for dinner. Then I decided to throw in my neighbours’ buggered chicken, Len, he’s on his last legs anyway. Then I threw in a bhuna sauce.
And thought he might like some……………………..

WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL THEM!?!?!?
My shrieking classes start in a week, and I’ll be done for Torticide. I’ll be imprisioned for taking the life of a small dry thing (by mistake), and sentenced to a ten stretch, or worse – it could be community service. This is a horror, for several reasons.

1. It means being present in the community.

2. I’ll have to sort jigsaws for a jumble sale (most have a missing piece and I just want to hurl a stool at the donator).

3. I’ll have to make pleasantries (speaks for itself). This means my impersonation of a whelk will hold no quarter with anybody.

I can’t use the ‘hibernation’ excuse, as I did that with the last one. I can’t say he ran away, as Bench had him fitted with a tracker built by NASA. I can’t say he’s dead because Bench will get Aunt Vom to get a Triad to kill me.
So I need options.
I have killed tortoise with either flageolet beans, or goat’s rue or tree bark, or buggered chicken, or bhuna.
Or all three.

So I’ve blown out all the candles, I’m sitting in my hedge with an emergency torch
and the Radio Times and some Bovril, because I’m in hiding until I know what to do. I’ve also got my hands placed over my eyes so no-one can see me. If any of you dear people have any suggestions, please share them with me – I’ve still got time on my side. Bench isn’t back for three days, and Folly’s weekend hiding thankfully only ends when someone finds her.

Yours in fearful imancipation,
MAB

p.s. If anyone could post some Twiglets I’d be well chuffed (address it please, to: Mad Aunt B, The Hedge, Trebollocks). Also, if you possess the newflangled contraption of a yoghurt pot phone and you are a solicitor offering free advice, my number is St Vitus 201.