Athens – National Park (Tortoises)

Spot the wildlife….

Here he is. These tortoises roam free in the national park and I’m sure that they’d like to get further but I can’t imagine that they’d negotiate the traffic and urban life of Athens city centre very well. He did though move across the park at quite some speed, so they must be able to cover some reasonable distances.

There is a story that Aeschylus, an author from Athens, was killed by a tortoise. This sounds a little far fetched, but the story goes that an eagle dropped the tortoise on his bald head, confusing it for a rock on which to smash the tortoise’s shell. It’s no doubt apocryphal, but it’d be a rather unfortunate way to die….