Saturday, September 11, 2004
Zoo
Hey! I just noticed that my last post was #100 for this blog! Yay me!
After I described our own little zoo in the last post, we almost added not only a new animal to the collection, but a specimen from a completely different species. You see, while I was out clearing brush out of my wife's garden and getting a sunburn in the process (damn Norwegian heritage), I found a turtle. Nothing special, just your average box turtle with little orange spots on his legs and neck.
We brought him inside and put him in a small box with water and some lettuce while we finished up outside (it was much hotter than it was supposed to be). Then I went online to read about the care and habitats of turtles.
That's when I decided that he was better off staying in the garden.
Oh, not that we couldn't have taken good care of him. In fact, I found a couple of good sites that had basic "keeping turtles" guidelines, and the process is pretty straightforward. However, seeing as we had no "spare parts" that we could turn into a well-planned terrarium, and I really don't need to be spending lots of luxury money right now, not to mention the potential vet bills if our little boxy turtle got a little too stressed out during his transition from wild to captive. So the turtle went back to the garden.
But not before our neighbors brought over their 2.5-year-old to take a look. The little guy has a fascination with crickets and worms and all things little-boy-ish, so we figured he'd be thrilled by the turtle. Stupid me, did we get out the camera and take a record of the turtle's short stay at our dwelling? Of course not. So Timmy the Turtle, as our neighbor named him, didn't leave any record of his visit. However, he may have a nice time hanging out in the garden, so we may well come across him again. I can only hope so.
Entire contents of this site © 2003-2008 Eriq Oliver Neale/Simultaneous Pancakes Media unless otherwise noted. I hate that I have to point that out...After I described our own little zoo in the last post, we almost added not only a new animal to the collection, but a specimen from a completely different species. You see, while I was out clearing brush out of my wife's garden and getting a sunburn in the process (damn Norwegian heritage), I found a turtle. Nothing special, just your average box turtle with little orange spots on his legs and neck.
We brought him inside and put him in a small box with water and some lettuce while we finished up outside (it was much hotter than it was supposed to be). Then I went online to read about the care and habitats of turtles.
That's when I decided that he was better off staying in the garden.
Oh, not that we couldn't have taken good care of him. In fact, I found a couple of good sites that had basic "keeping turtles" guidelines, and the process is pretty straightforward. However, seeing as we had no "spare parts" that we could turn into a well-planned terrarium, and I really don't need to be spending lots of luxury money right now, not to mention the potential vet bills if our little boxy turtle got a little too stressed out during his transition from wild to captive. So the turtle went back to the garden.
But not before our neighbors brought over their 2.5-year-old to take a look. The little guy has a fascination with crickets and worms and all things little-boy-ish, so we figured he'd be thrilled by the turtle. Stupid me, did we get out the camera and take a record of the turtle's short stay at our dwelling? Of course not. So Timmy the Turtle, as our neighbor named him, didn't leave any record of his visit. However, he may have a nice time hanging out in the garden, so we may well come across him again. I can only hope so.
