On Monday, Christine Little took Torty on an impromptu visit to see Te Papa\u2019s Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War exhibition, which featured a replica of the tortoise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought we would just pop into Te Papa and see if we could grab a photo with her replica. But she caused quite a sensation, and the next thing we had many staff and lots of members of the public very interested to meet her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torty\u2019s story began when Stewart Little spotted her run over on a road. Christine Little said he was not expecting the animal to survive, so was surprised to see this resilient little tortoise had stood up and was carrying on trying to walk, despite her quite serious injuries.<\/p>\n
A replica of Torty at Te Papa. Photo \/ Te Papa<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd given that obviously he was a man of kindness and compassion, being part of the medical corps, he picked her up and looked after her. I mean, she was, after all, wounded in the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christine Little\u2019s husband was one of Stewart Little\u2019s grandchildren and she said Torty once lived with Christine Little\u2019s mother-in-law in her rest home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a complete family affair.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Torty could talk, Christine Little thinks she might want to thank Stewart Little for the kindness he showed lifting her out of the mud that day in Greece.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I guess that she would have some pretty horrible stories about what she saw during that time in the war. She\u2019s also had a number of adventures along the way, like being stolen in the 1930s and turning up in a circus in Dunedin!\u201d<\/p>\n
Now well into older age, Torty still makes school visits and had her Te Papa outing, but her days were mostly spent with a regular routine of waking about 8am, eating and sleeping and then bed at 5pm.<\/p>\n
Torty the tortoise visiting Te Papa. Photo \/ Te Papa<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019ll wander out onto my lawn. She lives out just in my backyard, which I\u2019ve let grow, and it\u2019s grown into a bit of a meadow. And she\u2019ll graze. Just eat until she feels tired and ready for a nap, and then she\u2019ll have a nap. And then she might wake up and have some more to eat, and that\u2019s sort of how her day goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the next couple of weeks Torty would go into brumation and wake up in September. It\u2019s not known how long she could live for, but the family had a plan for when she dies.<\/p>\n
\u201cA number of years ago we had a discussion about this as a family. It has been decided that when it\u2019s her time, she will come back to the Manawat\u016b and she will be buried with Stewart and his wife, Maud.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s all been organised with the cemetery and it\u2019s all good and that is what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, Christine Little took Torty on an impromptu visit to see Te Papa\u2019s Gallipoli: The Scale of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24140,83569,1364,95458,111,43,139,69,36239,427,9348,8690,6642,1361,223,79628,189031,14450,6149,1299,377],"class_list":["post-358048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-checkpoint","tag-exhibit","tag-her","tag-i","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-papa","tag-story","tag-survived","tag-te","tag-tells","tag-that","tag-the","tag-tortoise","tag-torty","tag-visits","tag-war","tag-who","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}