Myah and her pet tortoise, a fun friend who is calm and caring.

BETHEL — Some kids have a pet dog. Some kids have a pet cat. Myah and Mack Field have a pet tortoise.

“He’s really sweet, we got really lucky, he’s not aggressive, he’s very docile, very laid back, and just kinda hangs out. We got pretty lucky with him,” says their Mom, Candace.

He’s a small tortoise, with 13 scoots, as Myah points out, on his shell. He sticks his head out and looks about the room.

“They don’t have the best hearing, they have good eyesight and good smell,” says Candace. “He just kinda hangouts and crawls around when we let him.”

Candace decided to get the tortoise from Petco because she said it was something different and fun, and since their family likes different things, they figured they might as well. And so they came home with the tortoise in a box. He was named, “Tort Tort.” He’s a male Herman tortoise and has grown to his maximum size.

Myah says her favorite thing about Tort Tort is, “He’s not super big and we can bring him to camp. We can feed him grass and things that he likes.”

“They’re weed eaters so they like to eat weeds,” interjects Candace.

Tort Tort takes baths in their tiled shower or in the sink.

“We just let him mosey around the shower, and he just kind of hangs out and drinks, it’s really cute,” Candace says.

She explains that tortoise absorbs and retains the water through their skin to stay hydrated for the week.

However, Candace says, “Once in awhile you’ll watch him drink which is cute because he’ll put his whole face under the water.”

Candace describes her favorite memory of Tort Tort.

“When we were in the backyard, Grammie and Grandpa were there, and we let him eat and it was a very nice sunny day and he just cruised and I don’t know what it was, he was on a mission,” she laughed. “If you didn’t watch that little tortoise he was going to be in the woods as soon as possible. He was on a mission to go somewhere. We’d pick him up and put him back and he’d just keep on going.”

Winding down with a talk about their first year with Tort Tort come Christmas, Candace jokes and says, “He’ll get his own little stocking this year, a little tort stocking.”

But for now,  “He’s going to sleep,” Myah says, looking at the tortoise who was, indeed, asleep.