What is Death?

There's a little pet shop near the Nakano library that specializes in lizardish creatures. Tomoe and I often stop by to visit "Ben", as we have named the big turtle in the photo. He is the "pet shop's pet", wandering around the shop eating from customers' hands (from a pile of fresh veggies provided by the owner). Today was the first time we saw him(her?) pee. Wow. It lasted several minutes, and just kept coming. This photo is in the early stages, but we figure he must have had at least two liters stored in his bladder, and it spread out much further than my 17mm lens could cover.

I have been reading one of the best books I have come across in a long time - Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, by Bernd Heinrich. It is a collection of amazing esseys and stories of how a variety of animals survive the Vermont winters. Some hibernate, some actually freeze their body - like cryogenics - waiting for warmer weather to thaw out and resume life. He writes about turtles, not the same species as in the photo, but still, long living creatures that spend most of their life... well, dead.

Turtles, both painted and snapping, often get run over by cars on the country road where I live as they travel to and from their nest sites. One warm June day I stopped to pick up one that I thought was a dead, washtub-sized roadkill snapping turtle, perhaps one I'd metearlier in happier circumstances, I was left to ponder what life and death might be to a turtle. A dozen or so ping-pong ball sized round eggs were strewn all around this smashed turtle. As I touched its tail, the animalretracted its legs. Thinking the badly smashed turtle might still be alive, although I knew it could never recover, I wanted to put it out of its misery quickly. I maneuvered my pickup truck to run it over squarely. Another car came by just then and the driver, quite understandably, stared at me angrily. But the good and difficult deed was was soon done nevertheless, and I dropped the turtle off with my ravens after off its head (since the body still twitched). Top my great surprise, the birds had still not fed from it by the next days. As I pulled once again on the tail of the long-since-headless turtle, her legs contracted into the shattered remains of shell, as they must have if the ravens had pecked it.

What is death to a turtle? What is being alive? For six months it stays under ice water, berried in mud, where breathing, movement, and presumably almost all heart activity stops. In spring it comes up, warms up, takes a few breaths, and resumes life where it had left off. It has done so for perhaps 200 million years or so that its kind has prospered with little change.[...] maybe yhey survived that fateful global winter after the asteroid struck earth much like they now routinely survive a northern winter, by simplicity. They reduce their energy expenditure to extend their oxygen and energy reserves.

I wonder what the large bladder size of the turtle has to do with this...

And then there was this guy pictured below too... Suppon is the ancient Japanese viagra. There are specialized restraunts selling stew of suppon, as well as bottles of suppon essence to *ehem* bring one back from the dead.