Traditional style colour tattoo of a grinning cartoon turtle holding nunchaku, framed by red and orange flowers, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cartoon turtle with flowers on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon turtle character with an orange bandana and a grin holds a pair of nunchaku, with a chain link visible between them. Red and orange flowers with green leaves surround the figure, and the turtle's lower body sits on a yellow and orange patterned base. Bold black outlines and flat colour fills give a traditional look, and the tattoo is framed by partial tattoos at the edges of the photo.

Traditional Upper arm Turtle Chain Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crate marked CANNED APRICOTS had been sitting under the strip lights at Harwich for forty minutes when Ruth Okonedo lifted its lid and found a turtle sitting on a stack of folded tea towels. He wore an orange bandana knotted at the back, and a wreath of red and orange blooms had been wound around his shell, as if someone had tried very hard to make him look like a wedding.

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"Passport," Ruth said. He held up a laminated card with a grin the size of a hubcap. "Name?" "Dez," he said, in a voice like a badly tuned radio. "Destination?" "Anywhere with a pizza oven and a decent bus timetable." Under one flipper, two short wooden sticks were joined by a chain, which he jangled with the air of someone who had been practising in the hold.

Ruth had worked the border for eleven years and had seen parrots in hairdryers and a man inside a sofa. She checked the manifest. Apricots, one pallet, consignee a greengrocer in Lincoln whose shop had closed in March. The paperwork was wrong in every line except the one that mattered, which was that the turtle had a return ticket tucked into his bandana, dated for a Tuesday that had not yet come.

"You're not going to Lincoln," she said. "No," he agreed. He hopped onto the counter, gave the nunchaku one clean spin, and bowed to her like a small green chef. Ruth stamped the card, initialled the manifest, and watched him trot out through the sliding doors toward the coach stop, the chain clicking against the flowers, while the apricots sat in their tin and went on not knowing anything at all.