So, in order to plant the anacharis bulbs I got off of eBay, I was going to put them into some decorative shot glasses filled with colored marbles. The only problem was that somebody kept digging the marbles out of the glasses and scattering them all around the tank. I thought for the longest time that the culprit was Jim, who I’d seen digging around the plants and uprooting them, but as it turns out, Jim is completely innocent.
I caught Bones red-pawed:
To look at him, you’d have thought he was just the most chill turtle in the world, sitting there on his little floating platform with his head stuck out and his legs all tucked in, just watching you calmly. The complete picture of bliss. At one with his environment, totally okay with you and what you were doing. The kind of turtle you could put a little hat on or put on a skateboard.
Nope. He was dead asleep. With his eyes open and his nose stuffed in the corner.
How do I know he’s not just a really chill turtle? Because normally, if he sees me, he freaks out and runs into the water and dives to the bottom of the tank, flailing frantically as he tries to hide behind a piece of driftwood or Spock (who looks like a piece of driftwood). This is his modus operandi.
So, given that he was so completely zonked out, I decided to see how close I could get. Eventually, I was standing a foot away from him and he was still asleep, so I gave up.
And then not two minutes after I filmed that, he finally woke up, saw me sitting on the couch, and ran off of his platform fast enough that he knocked one of the outside magnets loose. Good job, Bones. This is why you can’t have nice things.
I was walking through the woods today and this is what I found:
What the. What is this stuff?
OMG. There’s more of it and it’s changing colors!
It sparkles! …OH NO. IT MUST BE UNICORN BLOOD!
Where is it? Where is it!?
Sure hope the unicorn escaped. Didn’t see any signs of her in the forest, so she must have gotten away from whatever attacked her.
Looked like one hell of a scuffle, though. Stay safe, little unicorn!
So, I just passed by my tank only to notice that there was quite a commotion going on in it. Bones the Turtle and Spock the Pleco were chasing each other around.
Normally, this is because Spock is trying to get up on Bones’ shell and Bones doesn’t want that, so he tries to run away. This time, though, Bones was not running away. In fact, he was trying to get closer to Spock.
Now, I have witnessed Bones sit comfortably and let Spock suck on his shell to clean it off. That has become more frequent lately, but that’s not this was. No, this was a new breed of symbiosis:
Bones was after Spock’s poop trail.
That green thing, dangling around like a tasty worm every time Spock tried to get up on Bones’ shell absolutely tantalized the turtle and he kept crawling around, trying to get it, but then Spock would miss his shell and go after it, and then Bones would miss the poop and move, turning it into something akin to a dog chasing its own tail… if the tail were made of feces.
After a while, they got dizzy and stopped and then Spock went to feed on more algae and Bones went to scavenge along the bottom of the tank like he didn’t just try to eat someone’s poop before it was even all the way out of their ass.
Welcome to evolution.
Here’s Spock trying to clean Bones’ shell:
Here’s Bones trying to hunt Spock’s poop trail:
Yesterday, I got home from my regular jewelry-making trip to my parents’ house. This is the time that Bones gets his tasty food, which is usually some combination of shrimp, mealworms, carrots, and frozen juvenile turtle food (“tasty” is subjective).
At least, it is normally the time that Bones gets his tasty food. Problem was that there was no Bones.
WHERE IS THE TURTLE?!
No matter how much I searched the tank, high and low, through the plants and under the urn, there was no turtle. The turtle was gone. Missing. Turtlenapped? My only clue was the burnt-out bulb of the heat lamp.
Thoughts raced through my head. Did someone steal my turtle?! Why would they steal only Bones and not Spock? IS SPOCK NOT WORTHY?
“Calm down, Jessica,” I told myself as my rational brain started to kick in. The door had been locked when I’d gotten home and nobody but me had keys. The patio door had also been locked and my Xbox 360 was still in the living room. Surely somebody would not steal my cute turtle and neglect something more valuable.
So then where had the turtle gone? Frantically, I started searching around the tank. No turtle. Surely he hadn’t crawled out. How would he have gained a foothold against the glass walls? He’s not actually a ninja, or so I’d thought. I realized quickly that a corner of Bones’ Privacy Tea Towel was hanging into the tank low enough that he’d have been able to reach it and pull himself out.
My turtle was a ninja. He could climb walls! But then the question was… How had he fared with the four-foot drop on the other side? A mighty large drop for such a small turtle.
My frantic search resumed. I crawled worm-style on the floor, getting my viewpoint as low as possible so that I could peer under every piece of furniture that I owned. He wasn’t under the table or the coffee table or the couch. He wasn’t under my plant stand or my shelving or behind my entertainment center. He wasn’t in the storage room or in the closet. He wasn’t anywhere! I couldn’t find him!
But then I started thinking, “If I were a turtle, I would look for somewhere warm and dark. Somewhere to hide.” So I surveyed the living room again. Eventually, I found this nook:
This is my “craft corner”. It’s where I keep various craft supplies for the projects I have planned. It’s also just about as far away from any of the ceiling vents as one could get and also a dark place. I lifted up the bag, and magically, there was my turtle, tucked in his shell and sleeping.
Oh man. That was a relief, let me tell you. I picked him up and he just looked at me like, “what?” He was perfectly fine, if perhaps a little cooler than he wanted to be, so I returned him to the nice, warm water of his tank and promptly gave him some worms, which he gobbled down enthusiastically.
I don’t get what the problem was. I was just looking for my medkit.
He is completely unrepentant. All this after I even bought him some plants to go in his tank (those rooty things in the pink flower. They will need a few days to get going, I was told). I’ve taken away his privacy screen to prevent future turtle adventures, so he’s just going to have to get used to seeing me all the time. It’s your own damn fault, Bones.
Still don’t see what the problem was.
Today, I’ll be heading down to get another heat lamp for him, as the old bulb actually cracked when it burnt out. I wonder if maybe it made a loud sound that scared Bones? Or maybe he just got cold. I don’t even know. Goddamn turtle, scaring the hell out of me. Thanks for that.
In other news, I finally got a picture of Jim, The Fish That Lived:
Sometimes, Jim comes over and cleans Spock off. I don’t know what he thinks he’s cleaning, but Spock just stoically sits there and lets the captain pick at him.
This is what happens when I put a piece of Spock’s food in the tank. EVERYBODY wants it. Poor Spock. Bones and Jim don’t even like it.
I call this the Stack of Star Trek. Bones, Jim, and Spock, all in a line! Jim is playing the referee here.
So, I suppose that’s a bit of good news! Jim is still alive and getting bigger, so he’s probably out of danger of being eaten now.
Still, though, I just know that every time I check the tank for the next month, I’m going to be making sure the turtle is actually in it.
In which Bones is a Turtle 