Thursday, November 22, 2007
The turtle’s owner was 9 years old when he bought Myrtle.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
MCCUTCHANVILLE, Ind. — The celebrity in Don Mobley’s home in McCutchanville has her own concrete swimmin’ hole with a rocky island that overlooks a golf course.
She comes when called and dines like royalty ($40 worth of night crawlers a month and a head of lettuce every few days), but pretty much sleeps her life away between Nov. 1 and April 1.
Mobley, a retired Alcoa executive, has forgiven her for sporting gold-and-black Purdue colors in a household that bleeds red for Indiana University.
After all, Myrtle the Turtle is a daddy’s girl.
He met her before Maris and Donna, his wife and daughter, or his son, Kirk, entered the picture.
Mobley was 9 in 1949 when he bought a dime-store turtle for a quarter from a vendor at an Evansville Jaycees “turtle derby.”
She was painted with a red palm tree on her back and fit inside a Dixie cup.
Mobley’s cousin, Charlie, told him not to “get too attached,” because that kind of turtle wouldn’t live long in captivity. “You’ll be flushing it down the toilet in a month or two,” Charlie warned.
Sorry, Charlie. Myrtle not only is still kicking, she’s a “rock star” with something in common with Bruce Springsteen. They’re both 58.
Recently, after friends showed him a “Coffee News” article suggesting a 41-year-old dime-store turtle in Overland Park, Kan., was the age champion, Mobley cried, “Hey, wait a minute!”
He contacted a turtle expert at the University of Kansas who in turn contacted reptilian experts at the Atlanta Zoo.
Their consensus? Myrtle appears to have celebrity status.
The oldest yellow-bellied slider living in captivity that they were aware of was a little more than 41 years old.
Years ago, the Mobleys tried to register Myrtle with Guinness and Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not, but they didn’t bite, saying they didn’t have that category.
Even if there is an older dime-store turtle out there somewhere, what’s amazing about Myrtle, some say, is the mutual affection that exists.
Except for Mobley’s four-year stint in the Air Force from 1959 to 1963, Myrtle has always lived with him, in a series of bowls and bins that grow with her.
She’s now 10 inches long and weighs 7 pounds, shedding her shell each year.
“If she was in the lake out there, she’d get bigger than this,” says Mobley. “It’s kind of neat how nature takes care of that.”
During the summer, Myrtle lives in a small concrete pond near the patio, sunning on her rock and coming when called.
But for five months each winter, she goes into hibernation inside a dark storage closet near an upstairs bedroom. She moves into a corner of a plastic bin, keeping her nostrils just above the water level.
When Mobley changes the water each month, he’s careful to put a towel over her so he won’t disturb her.
“She likes you to pet her neck,” smiles Mobley. “She’s a happy turtle.”