Teenage mutant ninja slave

When caring costs

Fred’s about ten, maybe a little less. A yellow-cheeked turtle; normally they live in swamplands, like the Mississippi delta or the Florida Everglades. They’re fresh-water creatures, can have a rapacious appetite, are not especially social (they tolerate each other rather than seeking out each other’s company). They can live to a creditable age and have, to my mind, incredibly, been known to attack and eat a pigeon. Their mouth is formed into a beak, and like a parrot can, they may give you a very nasty nip if you rub them up the wrong way.

All of this I learned today at the university vet school, where I was with Evelyn, who owns a couple of them, who also learned for the first time, as did I, that it is unlawful to keep these creatures outside: they may only be kept inside the house, in a room isolated from the rest of the house by double doors, all in terms of legislation passed in 1997. This is an animal that should not be offered an escape route out into the wider world.

Evelyn (a pseudonym to avoid identifying this hardened criminal of the animal underwaterworld) acquired hers as terrapins from another friend, whose kids had outgrown the fascination of a pet that you can’t pet, and who had been planning to turf the critters out (the turtles, that is, not the kids) into a pond at a local park. Later, one would learn that turtles are regularly culled from the pond: they thrive and then start to pose a menace to other wildlife. In this case, Evelyn’s intervention saved the council the trouble of the cull, and, a few years ago now, the turtles came to their new home. Now, one of them is poorly.

The university, one of the very few veterinary practices that can care for reptiles, was duly located—at a considerable distance from our homes—and, after a brief wait, we were ushered into the consulting room, where we were a little taken aback to find no fewer than six vets. Clearly, the school doesn’t get that many turtles to care for and this was a good opportunity for these third-year students to gain some valuable clinical experience (aside from deworming cats and dogs). After some exhaustive information gathering, the vets all disappeared into the next room, and re-appeared a short time later with a consultant. He checked the turtle’s claws and announced that he is a she: the claws are noticeably longer on the male of the species, other than which it’s hard to tell them apart.

The diagnosis was fairly swift: rapid temperature changes in Belgium’s typical climate had induced a case of pneumonia. The turtle would need to be hospitalised, since the oral medication is as good as impossible to administer other than by an expert. The cure would take around three to four weeks, and the doctor would e-mail progress reports, one or two a week, depending on what there was to report.

The doctor was remarkably au fait with this species’s needs and care requirements, but also recognised in us animal lovers of a special breed. He acknowledged the need for the 1997 containment legislation but stated frankly that keeping such creatures in a terrarium inside the house is no life for the poor dumb animals. They are certainly happier outside in a pond, and that’s where they should stay. “Just don’t broadcast their presence to the world at large,” he advised. I can’t remember the police doing lightning dawn turtle raids in our neighbourhood, so the teenage mutants won’t need tipping into the sewer any time soon.

Finally, the doctor gave an assessment of the likely costs of hospitalisation. “A hundred and twenty to 150 euros.” I had already ventured an unspoken guess in my own head, and this came pretty much within my ballpark figure. Now, legally, since 1997, it has not been possible to purchase a yellow-cheeked turtle, owing to that legislation. So, even if a market price were available, I have no idea what it would be. But I bet it’s not up in the region of 120 euros. And, whilst the turtle is technically a domestic pet, its value to its keeper is restricted to the pleasure it gives from being seen (which is rarely, given they are shy and tend to dive beneath the water when approached) plus the visceral pleasure obtained from the act of love, in caring for it in the first place (a bit like sponsoring a child in a far-off, famine-wracked land). Of course, it would be eminently more useful if the turtle had an economic contribution to make. Like mowing the lawn, doing the washing up, making the beds or, even, as those of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird did, ridding New York of the Shredder. At a pinch: forming the basis of real (as opposed to mock) turtle soup. But Fred, or Freda as she will henceforth be known, does none of these things, even if she was the star attraction at the vet school today. She simply costs Evelyn money.

All of this conjures a question: had the price of in-patient treatment exceeded an estimated 150 euros, at what point would Evelyn have baulked, and said, “Too expensive. Let the animal die”? I didn’t ask her for an answer, which, as an animal lover, I know she cannot give, but I posed the question in another way.

Here we have a living thing that the law treats as a chattel. It is in captivity, although not quite the captivity that the law prescribes. It is utterly dependent upon its owner for being fed and for its habitat. In return, it gives only visceral pleasure, just by being, but no economic benefit. Its continued existence is dependent on a whim: the readiness of its owner to invest 150 euros in its continued life, otherwise to commit it to an early grave. The economic arguments aside, Freda, the turtle, is no different to a slave.

If you’re of a hard-headed, practical bent, you’ll be conscious of, or may even profess, proclaim and vaunt, the difficult economic decisions you’re forced to make in running a business. None is more hard-headed than when a decision requires to be taken that is life or death in its consequences. Casting an employee into poverty to improve the profit margin pales in comparison with a decision to operate faulty machinery that costs a person their life. But nothing quite compares to business arrangements that paid no heed whatsoever to the life of the worker, where safety is regarded as a pesky imposition by do-gooder government.

If considering such a constellation is met with degrees of differentiation, depending on the case, on the circumstances and on who, exactly, is involved, then I’ve little doubt that, in your care, Freda would now be dead. Perhaps, in a gesture of humane kindness, you’d pay for the university to euthanise her. Then, again, perhaps you’d have accidentally-on-purpose driven over her as you exited the car park. The result would be the same, after all, but less costly.

Those who are concerned by our forebears’ involvement in the treatment of humankind as a chattel from which to extract profit can be lulled into a self-satisfied sense of security, that such practices have, thank God, been banished from this Earth. This insouciance is partly a product of their inability to cast themselves in the role of a slave owner. In the past, the Brazilians would shovel coffee into the sea in order to keep the global market price at a high level. More recently, a series of fires occurred across the world in which thousands of cattle were barbecued alive in their pens, all the result of a spate of mysterious electrical faults. It is one thing to dispose of goods that have become obsolescent (along with the unwanted burden that that places on the Earth). It’s quite something else to dispose of a dumb animal to augment market prices. And there are some who extend the notion even to human beings.

The difference between a turtle and a human slave is obvious to the average man or woman, who, needs must, weighs up economic benefit against disposable income. But it is less discernible to an animal lover. Or, for that matter, a lover of humanity.

The greatest factor prompting the repeat of history is our inexorable failure to recognise our own capacity … to repeat it.