Tu'i Malila was a radiated tortoise, a species from Madagascar, who lived in the grounds of the Royal Palace in Nuku'alofa, Tonga, where she was looked after as a chief. Legend says Captain Cook gave her to a Tongan chief in 1777, but his journals never mention it, and the scientists who examined her body called the story a matter of doubt. By her last years she was blind, her shell dented by a horse's kick and a dray's wheel and split by a grass fire she had wandered into. She died in May 1966 (some sources say 1965), at an age legend puts at 188; thought to be male all her life, she was most likely female. This short tells her life the way La Maison en Petits Cubes (Kunio Kato, 2008) tells one: something dropped, and a slow descent through the years.

Who is the oldest friend, person or animal, your family has ever had?

Sources: Joan Robb and E. G. Turbott, "Tu'i Malila, Cook's Tortoise", Records of the Auckland Institute and Museum (1971), with J. C. Beaglehole's notes on the Cook tradition; Kaniva Tonga (2022); Kunio Kato on making La Maison en Petits Cubes, as gathered by Animation Obsessive (2023).

Film and music: ours, an homage made independently of the makers of La Maison en Petits Cubes. Sounds: recordings by Ali_6868, bojan_t95, calebrankin, ChristopherJngs, Cinetony, coalcon, cognito perceptu, craigsmith, I.fekry, ivolipa, j1987, jmbphilmes, Joseph Sardin, kyles, nvmbky, qubodup, Rudmer_Rotteveel, TRP and unfa (CC0) on Freesound and BigSoundBank. Instrument samples: Apple Logic and GarageBand. Cello recordings: University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios.