Our Turtles
We've had a pair of
turtles
for over 10 years. We've actually had Mr. Turtle longer than Lady
Turtle.
We got him in The female we got with him got away just before we went
to
Ireland in 1998. I was lucky to find another female since breeders
usually
keep back grown females to breed.
On Valentine’s Day in 2005, I sent an e-mail to Smoot with sad news. I went out to give the turtles some worms and noticed something floating on their water. It was a baby turtle! Sadly, it was dead. It was the size of a 50 cent piece. I don't know when it could have hatched or why there was only one. It was already decomposing and I couldn't tell if it had been born defective or if its little feet and head had been bitten off. Ugh. For the next few days, I checked the turtle area several times trying to see if there might be another baby, but with no luck. I don't know where the poor baby had been hiding before his ill-fated dip in the pond. Poor little thing. I told Marilyn about it and she too was upset. How could we both have missed it?
On March 9, 2005, I shared a funny story about our female Red-eared slider
turtle,
Lady Turtle. She and Mr. Turtle normally live in an enclosed pond
outside
our master bath, but when she gets into her nesting phase, she likes to
walk
around in our back yard. She can move amazingly fast when she wants to.
The
only problem is that I would have to be with her on her walks or she'd
hide
in the bushes or under leaves and I couldn't find her. It occurred to
me
that if I had a colorful leash on her, she'd be able to walk around and
I
could always see where she was. Smoot and I went to the pet store and
looked
at halters and leashes for small dogs. The clerk looked at us kind of
funny
when I told him why I needed them, but he sold us what we wanted! We
got
the smallest halter they had thinking it would still be too big. Turned
out
she was bigger than we realized and the dog halter barely fit around
her!
I put the two on her and let her wander to her heart's content. She
ended
up buried in the leaves under a bush, but because she had the bright
leash
trailing behind her, I was able to find her when it came time to put
her
back in her enclosure.
Lady Turtle wandering the yard in what Madeline called her pink halter top and leash. The bright color and trailing leash was to help me find her when she went burrowing into the leaves.
She had been in her wandering mood but just the last few days she and Mr. Turtle had been getting hot and heavy. He gets rough when they're mating. I went to feed them and right in front of me, he bit her on the front flipper. I reached in to try to get him to let loose and would you believe, she bit me! Hard enough to draw blood. I learned my lesson. Don't interfere with conjugal activity! But later, she was sitting by the door to her enclosure which means she wanted to go for a walk. She doesn't come to my call, : > but she does let me know when she wants out. So I put her out. I checked on her a couple of times and she seemed happy. But later, I decided she'd been away from water long enough and put her back near her pond. She jumped right into the water. She'd had enough exercise, fun and sun for the day!
On March 24, 2005, Lady Turtle decided she wanted to come in the house.
Above is a photo of Lady Turtle after she climbed into our house on one of her walks in 2005. I don't know if she remembered that she used to live in our bathroom or if she smelled the water in the fish tub, but she was moving along until I picked her up and put her back outside.
This photo of Mr and Lady Turtle was taken in 2006.
On June 1, 2007, I was able to announce, “We have a baby turtle! Smoot found him in our pool this morning, luckily before he drowned. We've had two other babies from our pair of Red-eared sliders, but by the time we found them they were both dead. Third time's the charm. He/she/it is sooo cute. He's in a fish tank in our bathroom. The tiles are 4 inches so he's about 1 1/2 inches. The rock is there for him to crawl up on. Smoot said he was swimming hard and when he tried to catch the little thing, he dove to the bottom of the pool, a long way for something so small!”
A close-up of the photo above.
This photo was taken on June 12, 2007 and shows Baby Turtle all by himself with the basking terrace his father had used as a baby!
On June 22, 2007 we flew to Austin on the first leg of a genealogical-family visiting vacation East. When we went on our 3 week vacation, that was be the longest we've been away. Up till then our pet sitter hadn't had to deal with our more exotic pets who could go for a long weekend on one feeding. I'd put extra food in our bird's cage and feeders in our fish and turtle tanks. But that wouldn't work for 3 weeks; Marilyn had to feed them and she did a great job.
By Oct 2007, Baby Turtle had gotten bigger and darker
Another view of Baby Turtle in Oct 2007. He didn’t inherit his father’s unsymmetrical markings on the underside of his shell for which Mr. Turtle was originally called One Spot.
A photo of Baby Turtle on Oct 16, 2007 showing his size in relation to his original little basking rock.
On Feb 20, 2008, I
went
out our bedroom door to get a hummingbird feeder to refill when I
looked
down and there in the dirt and gravel was a baby turtle! My pair had
produced
another living offspring, well I hoped it was living. When I first
picked
it up, I wasn't sure. But it was indeed alive. It was sheer luck that I
went
out at that time. I don't know how long it had been there or where it
had
come from, where its nest had been. Our pair of adults had been in the
bathtub
for a while because it had been too cold outside in the pond, even with
a
heater.
In the photo above,
the
dirt in the water was from the turtle. I didn't think to wash it off
first
but just put it immediately into the same plastic tub I'd used for the
first
baby, now named Baby1. (The new one is Baby2 unless I can come up with
better
names!) I thought at the time, if we add a baby a year, that could
start
to add up. Little did I know what was coming!
The photo above shows Baby2's size, cupped in
the
palm of my hand in Feb 2008.
Baby 1 in his new tub in Feb 2008.
I put Baby 1 in a bigger
container
to encourage it (hopefully her) to grow. You can see how much bigger
Baby1
is than Baby2; it almost fills my hand.
Baby turtle 1 in Feb 2008, quite a bit larger than when I found him in June 2007.
On June 5, 2008, I sent an e-mail to Ginny saying,
“I now have 4 baby Grand turtles! So six
turtles in
all. The newest ones are only one inch across. They're sitting on their
basking
terrace. It's a rough plastic platform for them to get out of the
water.
(Rough so they can climb onto it easily.) Sliders have to dry off now
and
then or they'll rot! I've attached a photo that shows more of their
tank.
The terrace is pretty cool. It attaches to the side of the tank so it's
secure,
but it also floats on the water so it's always right on the surface.
The
black crud is algae. I've tried to clean it off, but it seems stuck and
I
can't use any cleaning solutions or residue might hurt the turtles and
two
catfish in the tank. You can see part of one of the catfish sticking
out
from under the terrace.”
On June 14, 2008, our next door neighbor, Marilyn who had been our petsitter until she gave up her petsitting business, called to say she'd found a baby turtle, obviously ours, in her back yard! She said her dog had found it, but not eaten it. Still it hadn't survived. I was amazed. How did one of our babies end up in her yard?? She said she'd keep her eyes open for others. That means we've had 6 babies born in this cycle, four who lived, two who didn't. That's a big change from the last two cycles, the one that lived from the June clutch last year and the one from February.
The five baby turtles from the Spring 2008 clutch next the measuring rock.
Almost a month after we found the first baby from the Spring 2008 clutch, I was cleaning out one of the water dishes we keep in the back yard for the birds, when I noticed another baby. That makes *7* in this cycle, 5 that lived, as opposed to one living baby last June and one last Feb. Amazing. They are so cute. And they really do seem to have different personalities as well as colors. On June 19, 2008 I put together a new, bigger habitat for them. In the photo above the new babies are next to the measuring rock. You can see the difference in size and coloring among them. And then a photo of their new world. You can really see the difference in sizes between Uno and the Tres babies. They all seem to be getting along even if some of the Tres babies spend a lot of time hiding in the decoration.
We went on a driving vacation out West in July.
When
we returned, we let Lady Turtle have access to the pool again. The
photo
above was taken on July 27, 2008 and shows Lady T surveying her domain.
Lady Turtle has free run of our backyard
now and one morning in August I noticed her standing outside our
bedroom door. I opened
it and she marched in, making her way to the bathroom, perhaps
remembering
her three weeks in the bathtub while we were gone. She then tried to
sneak
into our walk-in closet where she could very easily disappear. I
blocked
it off and put her back outside. Then that evening I heard a thunking
sound
from that door and realized she was knocking on it, hitting it with her
shell!
I opened it but she didn't come in. I checked her pond and found to my dismay, she and Mr. Turtle had knocked over their filter and almost all the water had been drained from their pond. She came to the door to tell me that! I re-filled the pond and opened the door for her again. This time she walked in and made a beeline to the closet! I don't know what she was looking for, but it was sooo cute. Then she walked behind our bed, aiming for the bookshelves where I keep a lot of family papers. I had to pick her up and put her out. But she's getting very pushy!
Above, a pic of Lady Turtle in her newest favorite position, half in and half out of our pool, perusing her domain. : > We've put the concrete blocks there to help her get out of the pool and hot tub. What we do for our pets!
On Aug 20, 2008 in a note to Madeline, I said, Lady Turtle again knocked on the glass door with her shell, walked in when I opened it, made a beeline for the closet but I headed her off. I put her in the bathtub and fed her. She ate a lot so must have been really hungry. I let her spend the night there and it was so funny seeing her asleep with her flippers totally stretched out. She seemed to want out of the tub the next day so I gave her the choice of the pool which she took though the water on the top is so hot it almost burns your hand. I guess she's learned to let me know when she's hungry or wants a change in her routine.
Madeline had asked about Mr. Turtle, whether he did anything like that. No, he doesn't. He very seldom gets out of the pond and when he does it's just to sun himself before he slips back in. He's very strong and feisty and will bite you if you pick him up and don't keep your fingers away from his head! He can be rough with Lady T when he gets amorous, but she's finally learned to bite him back and get away from him. I bewail Mr. T's actions but Smoot reminds me that Lady T can't have baby turtles without his input!
Lady Turtle on one of her wandering trips around
the
house.
Lady T knocked on the door again and instead of going to the closet she hightailed it across the bedroom, out into the hall, into the guest bath and then into the living room, much to Annie's consternation! She made it all the way to the kitchen then I put her back outside to see if she wanted to go in the pool. She didn't, she wandered back around and knocked on the door again! I got the message and put her back in the bathtub and fed her. She got worms, which she loves! She's so spoiled. : >
I’d been trying to take a picture of my little turtles all stacked up on each other. They have to get out of the water to dry off regularly and like to stack themselves up even when there is room to spread out. But they're quick to notice any movement including clicking a camera. Smoot and I had been trying to catch them and have gotten a few good pics. Not the perfect one, but enough to give the idea.
Usually the biggest, Uno, is on the bottom, but not always. And sometimes the littlest ones, the Tres series, pile up by themselves. I think they're sooo cute. If you look carefully, the first photo shows all 7 of the little bippers, with one only showing his head in the left corner.
On Sept 9, 2008, I answered some questions from my sisters. “Red-eared Slider turtles stack themselves even in nature, I guess for added protection. When we go to the Phoenix Zoo, they have Red-eared Sliders in the lake around it and they stack themselves just like that. As for the 'Tres Series,' I ended up numbering the turtles by clutch in Spanish. So the first baby, born in June 2007 is Uno. The one born in Feb 2008 is Dos and since there were so many in the third batch instead of continuing the numbering Tres, Quatro, etc., I decided to call the group Tres so individuals are T1, T2, etc. Might sound crazy, but hey it made sense to me!”
Above and below, some photos I took on Sept 21, 2008, when the kittens met Lady Turtle for the first time. It was so cute. They 'stalked' her, then one had the courage to bap her gently on her shell. Then one snuck around in front so they encircled her. She ignored them and went on her way.
