One for the Reading List...

[faustus]

"Henry Nicholls's Lonesome George [...] unravels the history of a conservation icon, a 200lb giant tortoise, aged somewhere between 60 and 200, which was rescued from a remote Galapagos island, threatened by knife-wielding protesters, and has steadfastly refused to produce sperm, despite the efforts of a Swiss graduate student."


Perhaps Swiss people just don't do it for giant tortoises. Wrong ethnic type. Just too, damn, landlocked.