Dan's Papers - September 14, 2007

I think it's fair to say that the Publishers and Editors of the various newspapers here in the Hamptons maintain a tightlipped politeness with one another. We compete for advertising and news scoops. We compete for readership and store shelf space. But we all know never to attack one another because with the firepower that comes with freedom of the press, if one of us ever attacked another, the attack would only come back. And that might just benefit a third.

Thus, if it ever happened that a Publisher shot his wife in the kitchen, the headline in all the competitors' newspapers would read GUNSHOTS FIRED HERE. There's a certain comfort in that. It's one of the perks of being a Publisher.

Thus it is that, in this context, I was so surprised to see, on page D5 of the August 30 issue of the East Hampton Star, a picture of a member of my family being held up off the ground and forced to face the camera, appearing three columns wide and six inches high, with the caption that this creature had been lost somewhere, but was now found. And all we had to do now was claim him.

And I'd like to thank the Star for that. Thus, were we reunited with our twenty pound, dinner plate-sized red-legged South American tortoise who had been lost and away from home for the past two and a half weeks.

Oh, is this such a small town story.

It began eighteen years ago, when an environmentalist named Andy Sabin took a six-year-old boy named Ben on a nature walk in Amagansett to find salamanders, snakes and other reptiles. At the end of the walk, Andy gave the boy a three-inch turtle that had been bred in captivity in Florida, hoping to foster his continuing interest in naturalism.

"This is for your son Ben," Andy said, addressing Ben's mother Christine. "I want you to care for this turtle for him until he grows up and can take care of it himself."

Andy had recently returned from the Amazon, stopping in Florida to pick up this turtle and some others. He is the philanthropist who founded the new South Fork Natural History Museum on the Sag Harbor Turnpike in Bridgehampton. He also knows all about lizards, salamanders, snakes, alligators and other reptiles. He knows much about all the other creatures on the planet. And he did explain - I wasn't there at the time - the maintenance factors involving this particular turtle. He was a vegetarian. He ate leaves and vegetables. He would grow big. He would live to be, perhaps, a hundred years old. He would need a bath every morning. He would do one poop a day, usually in the bath. So there you are. Good luck.

Thus began Chris' stewardship. Every parent knows what this is.

Five years ago, I met Chris and came to know and love the menagerie of creatures that she lives with, which included, what was by this time, a full-grown beast living in Chris' Manhattan apartment. He was about the size of a portable television set that slowly crept silently across the floor in an innocent, but nevertheless very intimidating fashion.

Later, back in East Hampton, I introduced Dribble - named after the turtle in Judy Bloom's children's book Superfudge - to my two dogs. They all sniffed each other and expressed mutual interest for a while. Then they went their separate ways. There was no further contact.

"He doesn't bite," Chris said. "He eats leaves."

I tried putting my finger close to his beak to see. I trust Chris. Then I thought better of it.

As time went by, I did notice that Dribble, in the fullness of his adulthood, was the sort of fellow who minded his own business, never got angry, seemed to have no particular place he wanted to go, but was happy about that. I sometimes looked at him and wondered - what are you thinking? Not much, he would reply. He would stick his head out when he was curious to see something. He would stick his head in when he was scared of something, such as a strange dog in the house. But he loved children, although only in a way that a full-grown Amazonian reptile might. It was hard to say.

We have a sunken dining room, which means that there are two steps up from the heated brick floor to any of the other rooms that lead off it. In other words, during the winter, Dribble was king of the dining room.

In the summertime, Dribble enjoyed the Hamptons out of doors, as everybody else did, but in his own private grass pasture ten feet by thirty feet with numerous bushes to lurk under, a pasture bounded on three sides by wooden fences and on the fourth by a deck dressed underneath with latticework, which we had come to believe was turtle impenetrable. How wrong we were.

Two and a half weeks ago, Dribble vanished. We went out there and he wasn't there. We called, here Dribble, here Dribble, and there was no answer. Chris said he would come back. I wasn't so sure. Chris said we should call the police and the animal control unit, and I did. Chris said we should put up signs around at Damark's Deli, and we did that. Chris expressed periods of sadness. And she thought she had found where Dribble had made his exit, in what was a small break in the latticework.

"He must have gotten under the deck and from there gotten through the latticework on the other side by the driveway. He couldn't have gone far."

We looked in the driveway. We went up and down Three Mile Harbor Road looking for him. We waited. I called East Hampton Fence to have them come fix the break. After a week, I thought he could have indeed gotten very far.

Which way could he have gone? Into the harbor and swum away? It was Chris' belief he would sink like a stone. Up the street toward East Hampton Point? Down the street and into downtown? Could he have got run over? At least he would not go hungry, I thought at one point. All he had to do was put his head down and eat grass. But I felt sad anyway, not because Dribble and I were pals or anything, but because he mattered so much to Chris.

"How do I tell this to Ben?" she said at one point. Ben, by this time, was long gone from the nest and was now working as an Editor for the New Republic Magazine in Washington, DC. I tried to help Chris grieve.

"Dribble is on the road," I told her. "He will be fine. He lives in his shell. It's like his motor home. He lives to be a hundred. He's having a fine time."

It didn't help much.

On the afternoon of August 30, I got a phone call from Andy Sabin himself.

"Have you seen the Star?" he asked. I had seen the Star, but apparently I had missed the lug's big puss on page D5.

"Is Dribble all right? There is this tortoise that looks just like Dribble that somebody found. Is Dribble okay?"

"No," I said. "He's been away. We can't find him."

"Well look at page D5. I think it's him! Why don't you tell me these things?"

The finders of the tortoise, the caption said, were Tom and Charlie Miller of Oak Dale Farms on Three Mile Harbor Road next to the Round Swamp Farm where Chris shops every weekend. I called the farm. This is just one mile toward downtown from our house on Three Mile Harbor Road.

Here's what Tom had to say.

"I was with my eight-year-old son Charlie cleaning old paneling out of the late Cliff Townsend's house next door to, I guess, your house, when I just went out the back door carrying stuff and tripped over what I thought was a big rock. I had never seen anything like this guy before."

Tom, who knows his animals - there are horses, roosters, pigs, chickens, goats and even sometimes yaks on his 12-acre farm down the road - knew right away that this tortoise was not from around here.

"I called Larry Penny, our knowledgeable town environmentalist, and he told me it had to be a box turtle. I told him this is no box turtle. It's got red legs. He said maybe it's a WESTERN box turtle. Just set it free. I told him it had to be somebody's pet turtle. It was huge. This was not from around here."

Tom put Dribble - who he had decided to call Mr. Big - into the back of his truck and took him down the street. He set up a portable outdoor enclosure for him, and he waited.

"I figured somebody would be looking for him. I looked around for signs. I didn't see any. How far could he have got?"

One of his friends told him he had seen Mr. Big the day before, down by the little park by the boat slips that are across the street from the Townsend's. If true, it was amazing he hadn't been hit by a car. Tom called the East Hampton Star and asked them to come over and send a photographer.

"He's a really friendly guy," Miller told me, referring to Mr. Big.

I asked him about that.

"When you come near him, he doesn't hiss. And he comes right over to you."

Miller had begun to look for a proper home for Mr. Big if nobody claimed him. Perhaps a game farm.

The Star sent reporter Carissa Katz to take the picture. Carissa was one of my daughter Maya's best friends. They went to the Springs School and East Hampton High together. I have known Carissa since she was nine years old. Tom told me Carissa said she lived almost across the street from the farm growing up, and I told Tom that was true. Carissa stayed. Maya went to San Francisco.

So now Dribble is back in his pasture and the break in the latticework has been fixed, and he appears to be sort of strutting around down there. I think he is very proud of himself. That's what Chris tells me, anyway. He's eating well.

Dribble has used up just one of his reputed ninety-nine Amazonian lives here. It's ninety-eight to go. Go Dribble.