Later Life
Harriet was thought to be male for many years and was actually named Harry after Harry Oakman, the creator of the zoo at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, but this was corrected in the 1960s by a visiting director of Hawaii's Honolulu Zoo. (As it happens, Tom, the specimen in the Queensland Museum, was also a female.)
On November 15, 2005, her much publicized 175th birthday was celebrated at Australia Zoo. This event was attended by Scott Thomson (the researcher on Harriet's history), three generations of the Fleay family, Robin Stewart (author of Darwin's Tortoise), and many hundreds of others who knew this tortoise during the latter part of her life.
Harriet died in her enclosure on June 23, 2006, of heart failure following a short illness.
Read more about this topic: Harriet (tortoise)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“—No, no thou hast not felt the lapse of hours!
For what wears out the life of mortal men?
‘Tis that from change to change their being rolls;
‘Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
Exhaust the energy of strongest souls
And numb the elastic powers.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)