Friday, May 06, 2005

Turtles

The Adoption is complete. Rodney and I now have two more "children." We already had one by the name of Tammy. She is an Eastern Painted Turtle. Now we have two more turtles.

We adopted them from a friend of a friend (thanks, Frank!). I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew I was going to go look at 2 turtles. When I got there, it was instant love.

You see, turtles are my favorite animal. Let me tell you the story of Tammy:

One day, in third grade, I came to the bus stop and there was a neighborhood kid, Keylan, holding a cup. The curiosity got the best of me, as it does every third grader, and I asked what was in the cup. He showed it to me and there was a tiny little turtle in the bottom. I told him that it was so cute and that I wanted to take care of it. Little did I know that the $0.50 I was about to spend would be an investment for at least the next 14 years!

I carried the turtle to school with me and my teacher, Mrs. Jarman, thought it was the cutest thing that I had brought a pet to school. Of course, I couldn't keep her at my desk while class was going on, so she put the cup on the window sill.

I brought the turtle home and showed it to Mom, and she about had an internal cow. She got worried because she thought that if it died (because it was so little), I would be heart broken and scarred for life. Thankfully that didn't happen. We put the little turtle in a pie dish for the time being. Thomas and I, the next day, tried to make a habitat for her in a jar he had, but ended up breaking the jar. Thus, Mom finally went out and bought her a real bowl. We probably didn't get her a ten gallon tank until about 6 years ago and that is what she has been in until yesterday.

You're probably thinking I named my turtle after myself. That is actually not the case. There is a book, of which I still have a copy, named "Tammy the Sea Turtle Saves Lives." This was who I ended up naming my turtle after.

Now, back to the new "children" that we have attained. One of the turtles is a yellow-bellied slider named "Riley." He is actually almost the same size as Tammy (she's still a little bit bigger) but he is almost 12 years younger than her. The other one is a red-eared slider named "Rivers." He is sooo cute! He is about the size of a half-dollar coin (maybe a teensy bit bigger) and about a year old.

We decided to keep the names that they came with. They also came with a 20-gallon tank and lots of accessories. We slowly integrated Tammy in with the other two, seeing how she would respond to them being that she has been alone for the past 14 years. Everything seems to be good between all of them, so she has now joined Riley and Rivers in the big tank. We even upgraded some accessories in the tank to include an aquarium heater and another floating platform as well as another filter (the tank came with two more).

Hopefully, soon, I'll post some real pictures of them here so that you can check them out. Or, you can just come by my house and visit!

This is what Riley looks like.
This is what Rivers looks like.
This is what Tammy looks like.

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