Hello. It is me again and I want to share to you a funny thing that happened to a friend of mine. You see he is a soldier. And since I don’t want him to come running after me with nothing less than a grenade and a Magnum Semiautomatic caliber pistol, let’s call him… Sherwin. Private First Class Sherwin, US Special Forces, stationed at…. Well, I wouldn’t want a whole battalion of grunts and officers running after my poor battered hide now, would I? So let’s just say it happened in a US Fort stationed in a desert which is also the home of a certain endangered desert tortoise that figures well in my story. Oh well, on my story…

Private First Class Sherwin and the entire fellow battalion were undergoing a desert training exercise that day. I don’t know much about the army, but I have this impression that it’s kinda like a paint ball war, only you’ll have to dig up and sleep in your own fox holes and stuff. Any way he and two of his fellow grunts were holed up in their little fox hole that night and very, VERY tired and sleepy and you would too if you had ran all around Fort Ir…. I mean, a desert area, carrying around what seemed like 50 kilograms of stuff on your back and that does not include weapons and ammo. And so, like I said, those three grunts were very tired and sleepy but like good soldiers, they decided to take shifts in night sentry. Yeah, like someone would actually come and blow them off with a rocket launcher during a TRAINING exercise in Fort Ir… I mean in their OWN Fort. But then again this is a democratic country and if our generals couldn’t see the logic in that who are we to say otherwise, huh? Well, anyhow, back to the story, PFC Sherwin chose to take the first shift, while the other two, Mike and Ian, decided to take the second and third shifts respectively.

Anyway, PFC Sherwin was there sitting and valiantly trying to stay awake while his two fox hole mates (I don’t know what else to call them…) were enjoying their sleep. Note that the word here is TRYING since PFC Sherwin was dozing off and on every few seconds. Until finally he couldn’t resist the temptations to sleep and he did. After a few minutes, someone or something knocking on his helmet rudely awakened him. A quick glance at his fellow grunts told him that they were still fast asleep and so he ignored the knocking on his helmeted head fell asleep again. And once more, he ignored it. Now would be a good time to explain that the nighttime is the time wherein the desert go out and do their ‘thing’. You know, hunt, prowl around and other nighttime acts that I shouldn’t mention. Anyway, as I said earlier, PFC Sherwin ignored the soft knocking on his helmeted head and dozed off. Unfortunately, the tapping sound woke his two fellow grunts up and people; you won’t believe what they saw next. Just above the foxhole was a medium sized desert tortoise and guess what…IT WAS HUMPING ON PFC SHERWIN’S HELMETED HEAD!

Now, people, desert tortoises are normally shy and mild-mannered turtles, unless you interrupt their males while doing… um, mating rituals, then they turn ugly on you and bite off a few of your fingers while at it. Needless to say, Privates Mike and Ian didn’t thought of that first and after getting over their snickers, which started every time they glanced at PFC Sherwin and the desert tortoise ‘private’ moment, they decided to wake the poor guy up.

Naturally, PFC Sherwin freaked out once he realized that a desert cousin of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was violating his helmeted head and jumped, knocking the poor sex crazed turtle (well you would be too if you’d lived in a hot place where the few females were probably several miles away and it will take you a couple of months to reach them, assuming that they were there in the first place.) right in the middle of his reptilian climax, and sending him to the desert ground and the poor helmet splattered with white goo. PFC Sherwin ignored his fox hole mates (that STILL doesn’t sound right…) who were on rolling out on the desert floor laughing at him and removed his helmet and placed it on the ground. He REALLY wanted to kill that fucking turtle right there now but their training officer told them that desert turtles were not to be harmed because they were endangered oh, and the fact that doing that would result in cleaning the barracks for 300 hours. So he did what any sane and ANGRY officer would to do to his subordinate AKA Privates Ian and Mike: he smacked them right in the face to shut them up!

He had just finished beating the crap out of…I mean, shutting his fox hole mates up (really need to come up with another name for it), when suddenly he heard another tapping sound. He glanced and saw the turtle humping his helmet again, though thankfully none of his own body parts was inside the much-violated army gear at of that moment. He heard snickers nearby and saw his fellow grunts looking at the turtle gleefully before finally collapsing in laughter. PFC Sherwin shook his head, he was sure that this story would be heard all around the Fort in the morning after that.

And that, my fellow animal lovers, is how the Desert Tortoise became the mascot of Fort Ir… I mean, of certain US Fort stationed in a desert.