Tragic Tortoise News

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Harriet the Giant Galapagos Tortoise. Harriet is, or rather was (sorry), one of the world’s oldest living creatures. At the grand old age of 175 she was older than even Mingus Campbell and Humphrey Littleton.

Harriet will be much missed by zoo keepers at the Australia Zoo where she had lived, in quiet seclusion, for the last 17 years. She had an acute heart attack and passed away peacefully. Her longevity is being putting down to a ‘stress-free life’, much like the one which so benefited the ‘dear old’ queen mother.

Incredibly, DNA tests have shown that Harriet was in all likelihood born in 1830 in the Galapogas Isles, five years before Darwin visited. He brought a number of turtles back to England but Harriet is believed to have come from another island, which Darwin never ventured to, and so was not one of ‘Darwin’s Darlings’. She most probably arrived in Australia as part of her sentence after becoming involved in a hooch smuggling ring and running up considerable gambling debts in the late nineteenth century.

Harriet weighed 23 stone (150kg) and was the size of a dinner table. Keepers are now searching for a giant shoe box, two huge lolly sticks and a large space at the end of the garden.