Sulcate

During a trip to a gourmet grocery store the other day, I spent a little time in the cheese aisle. In the end, I only picked up some Jarlsberg Swiss cheese and some hard, Italian cheese which may or may not be blue, but I liked the description. It turns out that the blue-or-not cheese is as good as the description had promised, and the Jarlsberg is as good as it ever is, and possibly the best cheese on earth.

The problem with cheese is that it challenges my sense of self-control. Let me make sure my point is clear that this is a problem with cheese, not with me. People talk about “death by chocolate”, but if I had a free supply of Jarlsberg for life, “death by cheese” would actually appear in my obituary.

As with most cheese, Swiss cheese has a rind, and my Jarlsberg has a very thin plastic one with little grooves. So we’ll call it a sulcate rind, since sulcate means having long, narrow grooves or channels, though the word seems to be most commonly used in biology (like plant stems and hooves).

Interestingly, there is such a thing as a sulcata tortoise (a/k/a African spurred tortoise), which makes a decent pet, as tortoises go. It has concentric grooves in the patterns of its shell, which is how it got its name. If you want to know more about having one as a pet, you can join over one-half million others who have watched the YouTube video(s) about it. I’ll post a URL at the end.

But if you want a sulcata tortiose as a pet, remember that it will grow to be pretty big and heavy. And it’s not at all soft and cuddly (two dogs are on my lap as I type this). Plus, it will outlive you. They can live to be 70+ years old. So, if I were to get one now, it could likely come to my funeral. My obituary already says “death by cheese”; I don’t need to add, “survived by Crush, the tortoise”.

Pet Sulcata care instructions video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQZzUI8PrI&t=343s