A Legend Comes to Life

We all know that the earth is a disc carried on the back of a turtle. There are supposed to be four elephants in there, too, but maybe they are just covered with mud. This real-life turtle is carrying his share of earth, that's for sure! There's even a poem about it.

"See the TURTLE of Enormous Girth"
"On his shell he holds the Earth."
"His thought is slow, but always kind."
"He holds us all within his mind."

You might try to guess how this turtle ended up with the earth on its back, so redditor assa7iq did some digging.

Right? Everyone's just making jokes and I want to learn how this happens. I'm asking my herpetologist friend.

Edit - answers! I asked how this happens-

"Some turtles can hibernate for a year. Not all, but some. Probably long term hibernation. He probably had a little cavern of some sort. And due to the soil moisture it collapsed on him as he was getting out."

Then I asked if there's any good reason to leave all that on him-

"No good reason, no. He probably just woke up and has a tortoise bedhead. (If anything it's bad, because it lowers the amount of surface area is hit by sunlight for basking)"

Tortoise bedhead is more reasonable than the flat earth theory. -via reddit