More turtle walkies

Wonderful weather today. Really nice and warm, and sun almost all day. :-) I went to a flea market at Tveten Farm, which is only a couple minutes' walk from my building ... bought some books, just what I needed! and of course a waffle ... and when I got back I took all three little guys out on the lawn. We stayed out for about an hour and a half ... I mostly walked about reading, as I will, but towards the end some of the neighborhood kids discovered us and came over to meet & greet with the turtles. Raphael got a little stressed, but not very. Actually less than I expected. Herman enjoys meeting new two-legs (they may have FOOD!) and Henrik ... well, he was a little freaked at first, cause there were quite a few of them, and they touched him! but then one of them sprayed water on him, which he seemed to like a lot, in the heat and what have you. It was really cute ... there is a Sri Lankan family that lives in my building (very well integrated, I'm impressed with those people actually), they have three daughters and the youngest two were among the turtle watching crowd today. The middle one had a water balloon and when she realized that the turtles were starting to get kind of dry she offered to make a little hole in it and 'give them the water'. :-D She got a very gentle spray coming out of it and the guys seemed to really enjoy it. Raphael stretched his head out to get water on it. Aww. :-)

Here's a really great photo - IMO, of course - that I took of Raphael. I think the colors came together really well and the composition, or whatever it's called, works well too. I'm happy with this one. :-)

A couple of really good shots of Herman. He is soo adorable, it's easy to take good pictures of him. ;-)

Henrik. Anne Ida, KAS, trilltrall, if you see this, do you remember what we talked about last night? That Herman seems to be so much better at 'clowning for the camera' or whatever - obviously that's not what he's doing, but it is undeniably much easier to get good/fun pictures of him than of Henrik. But I think I managed to get a couple of good ones today. :-)

And, good news: his claw is definitely growing back. Not sure how well it shows here, he didn't like me fiddling with his foot so much, but you can see it:

I tried to be creative too today ... I tried to get a shot with one or two real turtles and one shadow turtle. They didn't come out as well as I'd hoped (Raphael wasn't cooperating, big surprise) but here's the best one. Can you see what I tried to do? :-)