Illustration Friday - Broken - hurt tortoise

Illustration Friday - topic is 'Broken'

I spent ages yesterday pondering this topic and couldn't seem to find anything interesting. I couldn't get away from the title of my favourite western - Broken Arrow [1950] starring James Stewart and Jeff Chandler . This film was one of the first to get away from the 'savage redskins' view of Native Americans and tells the true story of the friendship between Tom Jeffords and Cochise. The film also tried to portray the beliefs and lifestyle with a lot less Hollywood nonsense than most modern films - despite prevailing attitudes of the time.

Still this didn't help me much with what to draw for llustration Friday and then today i woke up sneezing and with streaming red eyes - which hasn't helped.

I suppose waking up with the beginning of a cold made me think about being ill and how that could be seen as being 'broken' in some ways. It also reminded me of once seeing a toddler who had tried to catch a lizard and decribed it as 'broken' , 'cassé' in french, because the lizard had shed its tail when trying to escape. They are, of course , meant to do this as its their survival strategy- the tail will eventually grow back.

This was one i saw the other day with a half grown tail. There are apparently break points along the tail so that the lizard doesn't need to lose the whole thing if its not necessary.
The dropped tails tend to wriggle a bit after they come off which is supposed to attract the predators attention away from the escaping lizard.

From lizard tails , I then remembered that recently on the train to Nice we had been annoyed by a woman reading very loudly in english to her little boy aged about 4 or 5.

She was reading a book about lizards and reptiles but would answer none of the boys questions so it was really frustrating for him and the rest of the occupants of the carriage. At one point the book mentioned that turtles and tortoises can have their shells repaired by vets -who use fibreglass for that purpose.

The boy really wanted to know why the vets used this 'boat stuff' for tortoise shells and the woman just refused to answer. I really wanted to shout over that it was ok not to know the answer and that the fibreglass was used because it was light, strong and water proof -but i resisted the temptation with a great deal of difficulty. I imagine she would have blotted my comments out just as effectively as she did her son's.

Anyway that incident plus a vet activity kit that a friend's child got for her birthday recently made me think of a tortoise with a broken shell mended by a giant sticking plaster [bandaid].
So something quick and simple in between sneezes.




illustration
illustration friday
tortoise