I talked to a turtle called Lucky today.

He is a very happy turtle. He told me he was eating lettuce, which he really likes.

His only complaint was that the water in his tank was not quite the right consistency.

Consistency? Lucky said that was not quite the right word. But I found that in the same way the Inuit have hundreds of names for snow based on its texture etc., so do turtles have many ways of describing water that my human brain just can’t translate.

So I used the word consistency. Fortunately Lucky’s human knew exactly what he meant—she’s been changing the filters in his tank and hasn’t got it quite right yet.

He was very impressed that she knew there was a problem and was working to fix it. He told me she was a very good human.