I just hung up the phone from talking to my brother Harry, in Naples, Florida. We usually talk once every week or two. He told me that he was going to spend the afternoon at the zoo. It sounded like a nice, ordinary way to spend the day in the Florida sunshine. Wrong! Nothing about my brother is ordinary. He is a wonderful, gentle man who can be at times "unique". He comes by it naturally due to the fact that our father was an eccentric (he was in the Guinness Book of World Records, and may still be, if that's any indication).

Harry went to Broad Ripple High School and, at nearly 6' 6", was a star basketball player when "Hoosier Hysteria" was at its best. This would be in the late 50s. These were the days when Crispus Attucks High School was a power house and Oscar Robertson was their star. Bobby Plump was making headlines in Milan, Indiana, with his "last shot". The movie Hoosiers was made from Bobby's story and his restaurant is well-known in Broad Ripple. My brother lived and still lives for Indiana Basketball. He knows all the stories and played with and against the best of them.

So it is no surprise that he named his pet "Hoosier". Nor is it a surprise that he would have the most unusual pet of anyone I would know. First I should tell you that this is a man who is comparable to Dr. Doolittle. He can go to Brown County and have deer walk up to him. Eight years ago when he lived in a condo in a Chicago suburb, the ducks in the retention pond would waddle to his patio for bird seed. When they had babies, the mama would bring her ducklings to his patio door to show them off. He would open the patio door and invite a squirrel or two in to sit on his lap in the recliner and give him peanuts. This was normal and regular to him. He had critters in his bathtub.

This unusual pet named Hoosier is the reason Harry was going to the zoo. Hoosier is an African Spur-thighed Tortoise that Harry carried home in his pocket from a pet store in Florida. When I first met Hoosier, he was basking in the sun from a skylight in a box in Harry's bathroom on the counter. By the next visit, he had graduated to a larger plastic box on the sunporch. He then worked up to a custom-built house in the yard. He got regular baths in the laundry tub and sat on my brother's chest as he reclined to watch TV. Harry would take him outside when he was doing yard work. Hoosier would take walks and, because he was slow (he's a turtle), Harry would follow him with a folding chair. He would sit and people would come out and talk. Hoosier would move on and so would Harry. One day Harry was gardening and not looking and Hoosier took off. Next thing, the neighbor across the street (who didn't know them) had picked him up and was carrying him down to the pond. Harry caught him in time or Hoosier would have been history....He is a desert tortoise. There are over 560 species and subspecies of turtles and tortoises and his is the world's largest mainland tortoise and will eventually weigh between 100 and 200 pounds, depending on gender. I'm not sure if anyone knows yet if he is a he or she is a she. They do not sexually mature until around age ten. Hoosier became too big to handle or lift and so needed a new home. This is where the zoo came in and the reason for the visit. When we hung up from our phone conversation, he was hopeful that Hoosier would still recognize him. They had been great friends. My research tells me that tortoises can be affectionate pets. Who knew? Pets make you smile.