There is a lie we tell ourselves as animal keepers.
We tell ourselves that loving an animal means never letting it go.
We celebrate the collections that grow larger every year. We congratulate people who have kept the same animal for decades. We wear longevity almost like a badge of honour.
I used to think that too.
Then I met Agnes.
If any of you have read anything I've written about Agnes, then you'll know exactly who I'm talking about.
My 20 kg bulldozer.
The undisputed queen of my now former tortoise paddock.
One of the most important rescues I've ever made.
And, without question, one of the greatest teachers I've ever had.
She taught me that the animals we keep in this hobby don't read care sheets. And if they did, I'm convinced they'd scoff, grin and do the exact opposite simply because... chaos.
Agnes, with all the charm and grace of a brick through a window, shattered almost every assumption I ever had about sulcata tortoises.
Diggers?
Not in the UK, apparently.
Grass eaters?
Only if she couldn't find anything else first.
Grumpy?
Maybe a little.
Stupid?
Not a chance.
Every time I thought I'd worked her out, she'd quietly remind me that I hadn't. She didn't just challenge what I thought I knew about sulcatas. She changed the way I think about every animal I've cared for since.
And that's what makes writing this so incredibly difficult, because this isn't an article about the lessons Agnes taught me.
It's about the final one.
I was recently put in the position of asking a question no animal keeper ever wants to ask.
"Oh... crap. Where am I going to put all my animals?"
Former breeders. Former ambassadors. Animals that had spent years helping educate thousands of people. Overnight, they all needed somewhere to live.
Now, I'm a resourceful chap. Give me a hammer, a bit of timber and enough cups of tea, and I'll knock together accommodation for just about anything you've got. As I've told people for years, an enclosure is never really finished. You tweak it. Improve it. Rebuild it. Redesign it. There is always something you can make better.
So that's exactly what I did.
I brought my three big tortoises home and set about building them a new paddock.
I won't bore you with the details. Truth be told, it wasn't all that different from what they'd had before.
Then came Scratch. Shelby. And my dear Agnes.
For a while, everything seemed perfect. I had my tortoises, they were safe, they were healthy again and they were home.
Then one morning, I was sitting in the garden with a coffee, watching three tortoises wandering across the grass, doing exactly what tortoises should be doing.
And I saw it.
Not gradually.
Not after weeks of measuring.
Not after somebody pointed it out.
Just... instantly.
Agnes didn't have enough room.
Not because the enclosure was poor.
Not because she'd been neglected.
Not because there was anything wrong with it.
Simply because she had become a very large sulcata tortoise.
I looked at her.
Then I looked at the garden.
Then I looked back at her.
For the first time, I stopped thinking about what I could build.
I started thinking about what I couldn't.
I started talking to Penny about the issue I'd spotted. Not because I wanted her opinion—I was getting that anyway—but because I wanted her to tell me I was wrong.
I wanted her to find something I'd missed. Some angle I hadn't considered. Some clever solution that would let me keep Agnes exactly where she was.
Anything.
Anything at all.
But Penny knew the moment I mentioned it. She'd seen exactly the same thing.
And she wouldn't entertain any solution that wasn't the best thing for the animal.
That's one of the many reasons I love her. She knew exactly what I needed to hear, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear.
She wasn't looking at Agnes through the eyes of someone who'd spent two years falling in love with an extraordinary tortoise.
She was looking at her through the eyes of someone carrying the responsibility for another living creature.
The question remained exactly the same as it always had.
Can I make this animal's life better?
For days I tried to find a different answer.
I couldn't.
Because the truth was staring back at me every time Agnes wandered across the garden.
The answer was...
Yes.
But not here.
Not with us.
People often tell me how much they admire the animals we keep.
That was the moment I realised that love and responsibility are not always the same thing.
The truth is, keeping them is the easy part. The hard part is accepting that they were never ours. We were simply entrusted with their care for a little while.
Agnes taught me dozens of lessons about tortoises.
Her final lesson had nothing to do with tortoises at all.
It was about responsibility.
It was about putting another life ahead of your own happiness.
It was about understanding that...
Personal isn't the same as important.
If we truly believe animals deserve the very best lives we can give them, then we have to accept an uncomfortable truth.
Sometimes the best life we can give them...
...is with somebody else.
Agnes doesn't know any of this, of course. She doesn't know what she taught me. She doesn't know how difficult this decision has been.
She'll simply wake up tomorrow, look for something interesting to eat, and carry-on being Agnes.
And somehow, I find a great deal of comfort in that.
Thank you, you big old girl.
I know your next paddock is everything you deserve.
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