Thread by @tjalamont

Before #Eddiethetortoise came into our lives, we had Bob. Here is his story (a thread):

This is a photo of Bob on the day we found him in the spring of 1994 (taken with my old Nikon film camera, needless to say). But his story actually starts about ten months earlier, in--

--May of 1993. That's when we moved into our house. We were young, and both nervous and excited to own ten percent of our own home (the rest belonging, of course, to the bank). Jump forward to--

--January 17th, 1994, 4:30 a.m.: the Northridge Earthquake. It was not fun. It sounded like a freight train coming through the house - it literally threw me out of bed. Our zipcode sustained more damage than any besides that of the epicenter, Northridge. Our chimney--

--was sheared off, our water heater was ripped from its pipes and tossed onto our car, and all the concrete block walls between the homes fell. Well, not all - interestingly, in our neighborhood, only north-south facing walls fell, and they all fell to the north. Anyway--

--we survived; others didn't. So I won't dwell on the quake, other than to tell one anecdote about the north-south thing. I had (still have) a 125-gallon aquarium. It didn't fall... because it faced west. It sloshed a fair bit, and a fish got tossed out (I rescued it). But look--

--at this photo. It's the trimmed end of a wire that used to connect to a speaker. The wire ran behind the fish tank. After the quake, it was UNDER it. Meaning... the tank, half a ton of water and rocks, was briefly AIRBORNE. I guess we have strong floorboards. Anyway, cut to--

--spring of 1994. The neighborhood was being fixed up; there were contractors' trucks everywhere. Our chimney had been repaired, and we had put up wood fencing on the north and south sides of the backyard to replace the fallen block walls. Then one evening--

--we here heading out to dinner, and my wife spotted a tortoise in the driveway, eating flowers on our hibiscus bush! We knew about Eddie, our neighbor's tortoise, so I called her to say that Eddie had escaped her yard. She said, "No, he hasn't - I'm looking right at him." So--

--who was this guy? I'll admit, I was kind of excited. I'd always wanted a tortoise. So we brought him into our backyard and gave him some greens and a hibiscus flower. I then did some research and--

--found out about the CA Turtle and Tortoise Club. I got advice on his care (like this pic of him being taken off to get his nails trimmed at the vet.) We registered him with the CA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. And we asked around, but had no idea where he'd come from. Then--

--finally, I talked to another neighbor, on the other side of us, and told her about the tortoise and all we'd been doing to take care of him. She said, "Oh, that's where he went!" It was all because of the earthquake: he always hibernated under her house, but when he woke up--

--that spring, since our neighbor's walls weren't all repaired, Bob simply walked right out of her yard! I was disappointed to give him up, but of course offered to bring him over to her. But she said, "Nah, why don't you keep him. Your yard's better for him anyway. You have--"

"--a nice grass lawn, but I just have a concrete pool deck. Besides, he doesn't technically belong to me; he's lived at least two other houses in this neighborhood before mine." And we've had Bob ever since. By the way--

--we also learned that she had once owned Eddie, too, and that the two torts had never gotten along (not surprising, since they're both males) and that she had always thought Eddie was friendlier. It's true, Bob is more of a loner. But we love Bob, too. We respect that he--

--has his own personality, that he's a bit of an introvert. So we don't blame Bob for having "resting Bob face." He's outlived a lot of people in this neighborhood, he's survived earthquakes, he's dodged cars to find his way to us. Hell, he might outlive me. I say...You go, Bob.