CRAWLING TURTLE

CRAWLING TURTLE

So the story goes that once upon a time the life span of both men and animals are the same. Both men and animals die at the age of forty.
One day the Committee of the Dogs had a meeting. The ‘Chairdog’ suggested that “Since we are the best friend of men we could show more our friendship and loyalty to them if we could give ten years of our lives to men so that men will live up to fifty while we, dogs, live only up to thirty”. It was unanimously carried.

But it was heard by the Horses and they too gathered into a meeting. The President of the Horses proposed that “Because we are the best helper of men we could best help men by also donating ten years of our lives to men so that men will live up to sixty while we live only up to thirty like the dogs”. Again the proposal was unanimously approved.

The two important incidents reached the Kingdom of the Monkey. The King ruled that “In as much as we are the nearest relative of men, we could share ten years of our lives to men so that men will live up to seventy and we die at thirty like the dogs and the horses. No monkey objected to the rule.

When we say life begins at forty it is because we only live normally up to forty years of age. From forty to fifty men starts ‘howling like a dog’, from fifty to sixty we begin ‘working like a horse’ and from sixty to seventy most men just ‘monkey around’.

There is no anecdotal record of what other animals donated some years of their lives to men that surpass the age of seventy but I will not be surprised if the turtle decide to also give ten years or more of their lives to men so that men live a little more longer. After all at the end of it all the turtle shall still live more than a hundred years. It will be carrying its home wherever it shall go but it shall continue crawling strongly around. Tomorrow and days later I will not be astonished if I wake up feeling like crawling on my way to the comfort room. Then I know that the turtle have decided to share with me a few of its crawling years.