Testudines, or Why I Love My Turtles.

Roger and Tullia, my beautiful eastern box turtles, are getting fat. In fact, Roger is so fat, as a normally shy turtle, he can hardly get his big fat head into his shell, let alone close his shell up tight--the secret superpower of the eastern box turtle.
Anyways, I've got to remember that turtles are not like people, or even simply, not like mammals. It's hard to imagine going for days or even weeks without food, but for turtles, it's par for the course. In fact, I felt wracked with guilt for not feeding them for three days, but they still need to go to Jenny Craig.
First of all, I only feed them for sentimental reasons--because I like to see them. However, they probably have all the food they need between digging up juicy worms and bugs in the compost area to chomping on the cabbage I planted. Then add a few enormous nightcrawlers and chopped bananas, served to them on a pink doggie dish, and well, let's just say I'm probably overfeeding them. I just hope I don't do this to my own children.
The reason we have this misunderstanding, though, is that turtles, like all reptiles and other cold-blooded creatures, are solar-powered. They use the warmth of the sun to help their bodies perform the chemical processes necessary to life. In fact, essentially all bio-mass on the planet is solar-powered, whether we are talking photosynthesis in plants, or cold-blooded creatures, or even the warm blooded creatures who have to gorge themselves several times a day on the flesh of their directly solar-powered co-beings.
In fact, in many ways, turtles are the perfect foil for humans. Turtles are slow--they move slowly; they reproduce slowly (Tullia can hold Roger's semen in her body for up to four years before she becomes pregnant). Turtles are simple--they consume very little, are fairly hardy animals, and they carry all their wordly possesions inside their shell. They have very few needs and do very little. They haven't essentially changed in over a 100 million years. In fact, after the nuclear holocaust, turtles will keep doing what they are doing now, with very few changes.