The pet I’ll never forget: Darwin, the high-maintenance tortoise

If he wasn’t biting toes or fouling the bath, he’d be flailing around on his back, waiting for someone to flip him over. He was even picky about his lettuce …

We adopted Darwin, a 21-year-old Greek tortoise, on a whim. It was 2024. His original owners were no longer able to provide proper care, so a concerned family member (and friend of ours) brought this football-sized wriggling reptile down on the train from Glasgow to London in a bucket.

The friend offered Darwin to my then boyfriend, Jacob, who knew nothing about tortoises and everything about spontaneity. I agreed to help foster him, begrudgingly, as long as Jacob would do “all the work”. I also didn’t think “all the work” would be that much work. How high-maintenance could a tortoise really be?