FROM PET STORE TO FAMILY LEGEND: THE EPIC LIFE OF MORT
- Donny Levit
- 11 hours ago
- 6 min read
South Orange’s 30-something turtle has a story to tell
By Donnie Levit
On a typical day in her South Orange abode, Mort is feeling snacky. She ambles up to her mom, Devon Zahn, who’s working in her home office, and has already cut up some squishy strawberries that keep Mort’s appetite in check. Mort spends the next few hours napping, enjoying time in the water and participating in one of her most pleasurable activities – scratching her shell up against the office chair.
Welcome to a day in the life of 30-something- year-old Mort the Chinese pond turtle. A resident of South Orange since 2017, Mort’s human family includes Zahn, production manager for W.W. Norton & Company, dad Bobby Crothers, head of U.S. retirement at BlackRock and younger brother Henry Crothers, a sixth grader at South Orange Middle School. Mort also has a furry side- kick, Willa, a 5-year-old rescue pup from Georgia. The epic life of Mort comes packed with pleasant and not-so-pleasant surprises. It took a decade for Zahn to discover Mort was a female. “All of a sudden, there was something in her tank,” she says, recalling the moment during her college years when she discovered that Mort lays eggs. “I kept the name but kind of jokingly. Instead of Mortimer, it’s now Morticia. But really, she’s just Mort.”
Not many pet parents can say they’ve grown up and spent their adulthood with a turtle. And not many turtles can say they’ve survived major surgery as well as a stay in a bathtub in a questionable Secaucus motel due to a fire at the Zahn-Crothers’ apartment in Jersey City.
As Zahn tells it, Mort became part of her family because of her allergy to rabbits. “I wanted a rabbit, something cute and cuddly,” she says. In 1994, Zahn and her mom stopped into a pet store near where she grew up in Montgomery County, Penn. “There were two turtles and one of them was extremely cute. And that was it.” So, did Zahn know that she was entering into a potentially life- long relationship? “This was an uneducated purchase,” she says. “But little did I know that Mort would still be here. And that bunny would’ve been long dead.” Although a turtle’s lifespan varies, Mort could conceivably live until she’s an octogenarian or even longer.
Parenting a turtle requires a tremendous amount of on-the-job training. “We knew nothing about how to take care of her, and this was pre-internet,” she says. Zahn explains that the tank size and lighting setup they used could be the reason that she’s unable to swim. “She’s cold- blooded and needs to sit under a heat lamp to get warm. She then goes to the water to cool off, and vice versa,” she says.
The water source was not large enough for her to swim in and develop properly. “She also has metabolic bone disease, which is pretty common with reptiles in captivity, unfortunately.” Mort’s current tank has 6 inches of water, which gives her plenty of space to climb onto the dry area and take a breather. The setup also prevents her from drowning.
Because she wanted Mort to have a diet that aligned with her natural habitat, Zahn made routine runs to Walmart to buy containers of night crawlers. “I’d keep a tub of worms in our refrigerator and then we would put them into her tank,” she says. “It was quite gross, like live spaghetti.” But feeding and caring for Mort quickly became a huge part of her life. “It was absolutely a requirement that my high school boyfriends would help me. I come with my turtle and that had to be OK.”
And, of course, the same would be true for her future husband.
The two met while attending Penn State University. She quickly made it clear that Mort was part of the package. “I’ll be honest. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting my- self into,” says Crothers. Little did Crothers know that he’d play a huge role in cleaning, caring and even providing post-surgical assistance to Mort. Oh, and he and the turtle even became roommates while Zahn was finishing college.
But an event that happened during Zahn’s junior year at Penn State almost cost Mort her life. “This is where the saga of Mort really be- gins,” she says. During a visit to a previous vet, Zahn was advised to supplement Mort’s food with dry cat food as a means to increase
calcium.
“The vet was well- meaning but not qualified. And the food was too rich for her. So Mort started laying too many eggs. I woke up one morning and there was something attached to her. Oh my God, what is this? What is happening? Well, she had prolapsed her uterus… and it was now outside her body. Much panic ensued.”
Zahn and Crothers found a vet near Penn State who had studied reptiles at the University of Pennsylvania. “She was obviously super ex- cited to have this really cool case. She pumped Mort full of barium so that she could get the visual with the x-rays. The vet basically put the organ back inside of her. Fingers crossed,” Zahn says.
Unfortunately, the surgery did not take and the organ became necrotic. After receiving a recommendation for a specialized vet at the University of Pennsylvania, Zahn and Crothers brought Mort to Philadelphia for a hysterectomy.
“The doctors were all super excited. I was in the waiting room holding a bucket with a turtle in it. Everyone [else] was there with cats and dogs. So, I was the star of the waiting room. [….] The doctor actually got a grant to help pay for it. It was super expensive for a college student, even with the grant, but it had to be done,” says Zahn. “They cut a ‘window’ into the bottom of her shell and closed everything up. She was starting to become septic so they gave her heavy antibiotics. They closed up the shell with a type of automotive epoxy.”
After the surgery, Mort’s personality charmed the doctors and nurses. “Mort would come over to them because she hadn’t been pet for so long. They thought it was just awesome,” she says.
And if Crothers hadn’t already proved his dedication to Mort, he certainly earned what Zahn described as “Bobby points.” “She needed to be injected with an anti-inflammatory and antibiotics for several weeks after her surgery. I’m not a needle person, despite having done allergy shots. My job was to hold her arm out while she is trying to pull it back and Bobby would then plunge in the needle,” says Zahn.
The life of Mort has been punctuated by a series of complicated events. And yet, she’s always found a way to survive them. Before Zahn and Crothers moved to South Orange, they lived in several homes in Jersey City. In 2009, they fled from an apartment fire, which forced them to move out for nine months while their home was renovated. “We put Mort in a bucket – yes, the same bucket that she had been in at Penn [for her surgery],” Zahn recalls.
And during Hurricane Sandy, Mort had to survive an even tougher situation. “We did not have the ability to bring Mort with us,” recalls Zahn. “We filled the bathtub, we put in a bunch of food, we put her rocks in there and we left her in the cold. And I thought there was a chance that she would not survive Sandy on her own. She literally lived by herself in pretty cold water for about a week until we came back home.”
Although it’s clear that Zahn loves Mort dearly, she admits that she’ll get ignored for periods of time while the humans of the family live their busy lives. But her abode is a comfortable tank providing her with ideal warmth and proper light. As Zahn points out multiple times, taking care of a turtle requires a tremendous amount of time and knowledge. “Turtles don’t sit in the corner and just take care of themselves,” says Zahn. “They’re not cheap and not something I would recommend for a child. And please, you should never paint a turtle. You’re actually poisoning them when you do that.”
Every once in a while, Mort does get a chance to join Zahn, Crothers and Henry for an idyllic suburban moment. “When the weather is really nice, it’s OK to have her walk in the grass. But we have to keep an eye on her. She has some speed and can definitely scurry. And if the grass is even a little bit tall, she gets to hide. She likes to hide. But in here, in the office, she gets to hide and scratch her back. By the way, toothbrushes are the best for that. It looks like she’s dancing.”
Donny Levit is a writer, theater director and radio DJ living in Atlanta with his wife, two kids and two dogs. Catch his radio shows on IG at @jazzmonsters and @newishradio.
Adult Mort enjoys spending time in the water as well as scratching her shell against Zahn’s office chair.