smoking tortoise

Really bored without my female owner around. So I decided to let my thoughts run wild and somehow, I started to wonder how my female owner would react... if I pick up smoking. Given her disdain for nicotine (she used to work for the government in the national control smoking programme. Her work must have been effectve coz the prevalence rate of smokers dropped even lower during her stint there. Such irony, since my male owner is an avid smoker. Opposites really attract yah?)

I think she will hang me by my tail and disown me with immediate effect. She might even put up my empty shell in the Balcony as a warning to the rest of my siblings to stay off nicotine. Even the birds which fly past the Balcony will not be spared.

Anyway, nothing is impossible and here's an article on a smoking tortoise.


BEIJING (AFP) - - A tortoise that smokes and appears to be addicted to nicotine has been discovered in China's northeastern province of Jilin, state media reported on Thursday.

The animal is the pet of a man, identified by his surname Yun, who is himself a smoker, Xinhua news agency said, quoting a local newspaper.

One day, Yun teased the tortoise by putting a cigarette butt into its mouth, and to his surprise it started to smoke it, according to the news agency.

From then on, he shared his cigarettes with his pet, Xinhua said.

"It seems to have become addicted," Yun was quoted as saying.

"Whenever I smoke in front of it, it will stick its head out of the water and fidget about until I give it the stub."

Yun proved his claim by putting a cigarette in the tortoise's mouth in front the paper's reporter and his neighbours, Xinhua quoted the newspaper as saying.

To everyone's surprise, the tortoise finished it in less than four minutes, the news agency said.

Monkeys have been know to smoke in imitation of human beings, the deputy secretary-general of Jilin's Wildlife Conservation Society told Xinhua.

But he said he had never heard of a tortoise lighting up.