Bones is FAAAABULOUS.

I know I haven’t posted for a while, but today, I caught Bones sleeping in an oddly hilarious pose, which was really unfortunate because I was drinking something at the time.

So, I present to you my very happy, somewhat flamboyant turtle:

Aww, yis. Dis is de life!

And while I’m at it, I figured I’d upload a few other photos for you guys, just to make it worth your while:

Oh! This is noms?

Am I pretty? Tell me I’m pretty. TELL ME I’M PRETTY.

This is NOT the noms I was promised!

HNNNNRRRRHGHGRHRHG!!!!

And, for anyone who’s interested, he’s now a hefty 3.5″ in (8.75 cm) long in the shell now! This should probably mean that he’ll get to puberty sometime next year and I’ll be able to tell what gender he actually is. Maybe. Turtles are finicky things and my gendering skills aren’t that great, but by the time he’s in the range of 4 – 5″, I should be able to figure it out.

Bones, I will laugh so hard if you’re a chick.

Finally figured out who was making a mess of the tank

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:

So I caught Bones sleeping with his eyes open…

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. 

The things I’ve seen

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:

Bones scared the poop out of me

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.

Photo Dump!

I borrowed my dad’s old camera so I could take some photos of Bones and Spock. My phone is a POS, and therefore so is the camera on it, so this is a big improvement!

I also wanted to show how much bigger Bones has gotten! He almost fills up my palm now, which means he’s just shy of 2.5″ (6 cm). He was just over an inch when I got him, so he’s more than doubled in size! I’ve had him for 10 months, and as far as I’m aware, he’s well within the parameters for what he should be at this age. He’s even started shedding his old scutes because he’s completely grown new ones under them.

“What is this thing? Why are you pointing it at — OH GOD.”

As he’s gotten bigger, he’s lost some of the vibrancy of the yellow on his shell.

“Talk to the hand.”

He was very patient (kind of) with all my picture-taking. By this point, he was getting antsy and flailing to get away.

I also took some pictures of Spock, mainly because his patterning is beautiful. The last pictures I took of him weren’t particularly clear.

Look at all of this poop. It’s in a huge pile under him. SO MUCH POOP.

What beautiful spots, Spock!

Spock is a Clean Freak

So, Bones has a little floating platform in the corner of the tank that he likes to bask on when he’s not freaking out about various things. It’s his relaxation spot, like a beach for him to stretch out on and fan his toes out, as you may remember from a previous post.

Now, the problem with this floating island is that it also gets algae on it. I have seen, on occasion, Spock trying to climb up on it, sucker mouth flapping away, but he just can’t reach the tasty green stuff that he wants so badly. It’s so sad and pathetic, watching him clinging to the edge of it, able to see the luscious paradise just an inch away and being completely unable to evolve the limbs and lungs necessary to work his way up to it.

So, I brought the algae down to him. I weighted the island down to the bottom of the tank and Spock absolutely freaked out in stoic joy. He latched onto that platform and spent two hours cleaning it.

Om nom nom.

OM NOM NOM NOM.

Spock was as happy as a Vulcan-fish could possibly be, but I don’t think Bones was too terribly impressed. He hid at the bottom of the tank and just looked up at me as if I’d betrayed him by calling him out on just how messy his room really was.

“I hate you so much right now.”

Though it is somewhat ineffective because he can’t actually crane his neck back far enough to look at me, so he has to stare at me through the reflection on the glass. Otherwise, I’d probably have turned to stone from the patented McCoy Death Glare. Medusa would break eye contact first.

But, the evil deed is done and Bones’ room is clean and Spock is making another Green Mile for me to scoop out later. Life in the tank has returned to normal.

Back in the Swing of Things

It’s been a long time since I posted on this blog. There just didn’t seem to be much point since I lost Grimm, but things are looking up.

Bones has been insanely healthy since then. He’s now 2″ (5cm) long and still loves to eat like a pig. His favourite foods are dried shrimps, coleus leaves, grapes, carrots, bananas, mealworms, and blueberries. I’m trying to get him interested in dandelion greens, but he’s predisposed to hate the color green, apparently. He stands by the fact that being green does not make him Vulcan and that also means he ain’t no weed-eating vegetarian.

His words, not mine.

And speaking of weed-eating vegetarians, Bones has a new friend: Spock. Not that he would classify Spock as a friend, but that’s the way it is because I say so. Spock is bigger than Bones is. I would say he’s about 5″ (12.5cm) long, which means he doesn’t have to put up with any of Bones’ bitchin’. Nope, he goes and headbutts Bones anytime the turtle-doctor thinks he’s the boss of the tank. It’s a good relationship, I think. Bones has to get used to not being the only thing in the world that moves and swims.

He wasn’t too happy with my decision, though, and he protested heartily by eating one of the two inch-long feeder fish I put in there. Both my dad and I thought, “Hey, there’s no way he can catch one of those things, never mind eat them! They’re half his size!” and then two days later, one was missing and I later found its skeleton. I suspect Bones may have overheard us.

Anyway, here is Spock:

Spock the pleco and The Green Mile

You may have noticed that giant green thing following him around. That is his poop. There is so much of it, I can’t even describe it to you. I’d always expected that Vulcans would have very dry, very conservative poops because of their ability to live in the desert. Nope. Vulcans apparently have mile-long poops that multitask. When one poop is almost done, another one is formed and they chain together like disgusting algae sausage links.

On the plus side, there is almost no algae in the tank any more. On the downside, Spock is still pooping. Where does he get all this poop from? With the amount of food I give him, there is no conceivable way within the realm of physics that would allow him to create that much poop. He is a poop factory and he is not at all ashamed of it. He just swims around with his sausage links trailing behind him like the worst hot dog stand in existence.

Usually, he and Bones keep in their own respective areas of the tank. Bones rules the upper areas, hanging off the plants and relaxing in the heat lamp. Spock rules the depths, trolling the bottom of the tank for scraps of food and spirulina discs.

Occasionally, he decides to “help” Bones and clean his shell by sucking onto it while Bones freaks out and flails everywhere. This is what it looks like:

Artist’s Interpretation

Bones doesn’t even know what to do when this happens. It’s like that scene in the Mirror Mirror episode of Star Trek TOS when evil!Spock pins McCoy up against the wall and mind melds with him. Bones is just there, like “omg omg omg omg omg”.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG – Image from www.trekmovie.com

And then eventually Spock realizes that not everything green is edible and lets him go, but only after inflicting untold childhood trauma.

This is going to be an interesting friendship.

I’m sorry, Grimm

I may as well be blunt about it: Grimm died on Friday.

It still grieves me.

He’d looked like he was getting better. He wasn’t gasping as much, he’d started eating on his own. In fact, the day before he’d died, he’d eaten all the red worms out of the food I normally give them. It seemed like such a good sign.

But then the next day, I left the room to make lunch and when I came back, Grimm was floating lifeless in the water. His head was down, his legs were limp. My heart stopped. I picked him up and he managed to blink his eyes open, so I’d thought, He’s alive! There’s still hope!

I’d read how to give a turtle CPR, so I did that. I tried to make sure there wasn’t any water in his lungs and then I laid him out on his belly, stretched his neck out, and pushed his front arms in and out to help him breathe. It wasn’t helping. So, I set him on his basking spot and hoped that if he dried out a little bit, he’d come back to me.

Minutes later, he was dead. And man, did I cry. It’s still hard for me to write this. I feel so bad for him. I’d promised him I would make him better, but even though I did everything I could — two doses of antibiotics every day for nearly two weeks, a warm basking spot, lots of quiet, good food — it just wasn’t enough.

For that, my little turtle, I am sorry. I tried. My one consolation is that at least you’re not suffering anymore, and that’s a good thing.

So, this is it. Goodbye, Grimm. You’ll be missed.

Grimm’s eating again! (I know I’ve said that once before)

Huzzah! Grimm has started eating on his own again, which means I don’t have to give him a mash of worm guts and blackberry by syringe any more! He ate some of his frozen food and he ate the innards of half a mealworm, so that’s really good news. It means he’s feeling well enough to have an appetite, so even if he’s floating still, that must mean he’s well on the road to getting better.

Either that, or he was tired of my meal choices for him.