The healing power of a hiss. (Yes, hiss.)
Just like that, a gopher tortoise turned my day around.
During a quick solo trip to the Florida Gulf Coast last week, I got a text from my family member’s substance abuse counselor, asking if we could talk. Doh. Over the past year, I’ve learned the hard way that this kind of request is never gonna be good.
I had tempted fate, in a way. Bad news tends to find me when I travel, a curse of sorts that began on Valentine’s Day more than 15 years ago, when my mother had a near-death mental health crisis. I was on a trip alone in New York, visiting friends. When the nightmare-inducing news arrived via a phone call from my father, I had to throw my stuff together and buy the only ticket I could find for that afternoon, a first-class seat, a jarring luxury considering the circumstances. The flight attendants circled around me like protective angels, handing me tissues, accustomed as they were—and are—to witnessing sudden grief.
Now I was in a similar bind, but for a different family member. Instead of standing in the crowded Macy’s on 34th street staring at a pair of shoes, I was sitting on the southern tip of Barefoot Beach Preserve, alone except for a dolphin and a pair of snowy egrets. Beneath a mesh backpack jingling with freshly plucked seashells, I felt the long buzz of my iPhone, a sound I now associate with dread.
I wrote the counselor back — yes, I could speak in a few minutes. I wanted to take the call not from the beach nor the car but from the privacy of my hotel room, figuring whatever it was could wait for solitude and Kleenex. I began the half-hour return trek through the tropical coastal hammock to the parking lot.
Just like sitting in first class, the walk was jarring. The sugary sand, blue water, lanky palm trees, lush sea grapes, and scattered seashells were luxurious, but my mind was whirling deep into the bleak unknown, trying to predict what the latest development was in my sibling’s addiction. I stomped and huffed down the trail, kicking up puffs of dust, my mind back home in Austin.
Then I heard it.
HISSSSSS.
I yelped, ripped back into the present moment and the real world around me. What the? Florida is like Texas, full of well-camouflaged reptiles of all sizes that can envenomate (or eviscerate) without much warning. I should be careful, I thought, I should not fuck around.
And then something moved, a blur the size of a dinner bowl, the color and shape of a dead sea grape leaf, nearly invisible except for its 3-D roundness. I squeaked as it emerged the leaf litter near my feet: A young gopher tortoise, a species listed as threatened in Florida.
I squatted down, no longer afraid. In reaction to my looming face, she (or he) tucked her head inside her shell and brought her armored legs in. She looked just like the Texas tortoise I met last year when I was on a magazine assignment with a wildlife biologist and a ranch owner:
Tortoises hiss, I thought? How did I not know this? And how CUTE is that? I got up and kept walking, giving her breathing room. I didn’t take a picture of her, which I of course regret.
Instead, I googled “do tortoises hiss?” and sure enough, they do! It’s more like a rapid exhalation, and they do when it they’re scared or, alternately, about to take a big bite of food. I’m pretty sure this tortoise was not hangry but frightened, cowering as a giant omnivorous mammal plodded by with a garish neon beach bag and a heavy heart. (Likewise, I was not expecting a small omnivorous reptile, at least not in this past of the park, so close to the ocean.)
As I continued on, I looked behind me. She had scooted off into the scrub, surely forgetting all about me while she pursued fresh palmetto berries. I, however, forced myself to remember the encounter. I knew I’d need the memory later. Whatever grim news I’d face in a few minutes, I now had a hissing baby tortoise to keep me grounded.
More tortoise stuff
Besides the baby, I also came across several big gopher tortoises near the parking lot, happily eating, ignoring me.
I also spotted one at a state park, a few miles inland. The burrows are home to all kinds of wildlife, making them a “keystone species” for the shelter they provide to others.
It pleases me to no end to see such a vulnerable critter still alive in today’s troubled times. It seems impossible that they still exist, given the non-stop threats to their existence. Case in point: While I was in Florida, one was injured at a Barefoot Beach parking lot by a tourist who didn’t heed all the warnings to check under the car. (The tortoise is now in the good hands of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.)
Quick video of a tortoise who basically ignored me, which is awesome:
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