The boringest place in the world

And look, Herman has to live there. :-(

It's only for a couple of weeks, and he gets to be in the tank for a few hours every day. But it's sooo boring. I'm pretty sure he's slept all day today, till I came home. What can I do, I have to put him through it, it's for his health. :-(

Turtles in a puddle

The other day the weather was nice enough that I took the turtles out after work ... or at least it seemed to be nice enough, but it turned out that the lawn was incredibly wet, just about soaked through. It's been raining a lot lately. :-) There was so much water that I couldn't sit down even though I had brought something to sit on. (Sitteunderlag - what on earth is that in English??) I walked around ... but took my sandals off because I was walking in water anyway, so I might as well be barefoot. :-)

The guys aren't really used to being out in the wet ... getting natural sunlight is one of the reasons for taking them outside, so they only go out in nice weather. They're used to the outdoors being dry. :-) So this was a little odd for them. The little guys eventually found a puddle, and hey, this was fun! Strange-smelling water, but fun. It was fun for me too to watch them. As soon as they were in water Herman started trying to eat things. :-D

Sleeping turtle FTW!!

I love my turtles. I can hardly say this enough: They are SO CUTE. They do SO many adorable things. Their little faces!! Or lack thereof. Check this out. Right now, Herman is sleeping ... well, both of the little guys are sleeping, the light in their tank goes off at a quarter to eleven and they usually go to sleep pretty soon after that. Henrik is on the turtle dock, ie in a very dark corner, so he's all set. Herman on the other hand is lying on their bark island tonight - this isn't attached to anything and so floats around the tank. It's often next to the turtle dock, but right now it's sort of in the middle and more towards the 'outside corner', ie, in the lightest part of the tank. Which is still pretty dark, but, you know. I'm sitting in my chair with my reading light on. The tank is to my immediate right, I can reach out and touch it. Herman is sort of at my right shoulder, just a couple of feet up. And he's lying so that he's facing the room, not the back of the tank, which might have been smarter. The way he's positioned himself right now, the light from my lamp gets right in his eyes.

Well, that's what you think!! Ha! NO light is going to get into these eyes tonight!! :-D

The picture's blurry, sorry, it was hard to avoid. This was taken inside the tank just now. Is he the cutest thing ever or what. :-) Look at his tiny little nose there sticking out. This is hardcore R&R. :-D

Five years of turtle fun

Well, actually a little longer than that, since I got my very first turtle - who is now, sadly, no longer among us - in the summer of 2005. But as far as the current residents are concerned, this is a noteworthy day.

Today it's been five years since I got Raphael. I met him for the first time, and brought him home, on April 20th, 2006. That's pretty crazy. I can hardly believe it's five years ago. Almost half his life. :-) Here he is on their first outing this year, two days ago.

I've had the little guys for about the same length of time. I totally forgot that it was Herman's fifth anniversary with me this spring too. Shame on me. :-) I got him five years ago on March 4th. I remember that so vividly. My little fellow. :-)

Henrik's been here five years on ... I want to say July 12th. Thereabouts. That little clawbreaker ... ! :-D

The first time I met Raphael he wanted nothing to do with me. I tried holding him, but he wriggled free every time and hurried over to his then owner and climbed up on her lap instead. When he came here to live with me it took him a really long time to get used to his new surroundings, and to feel comfortable with me. It's gone up and down since then ... a few times when I've been away on longer trips, he's kind of forgotten about me and we've had to start over, so to speak. This winter I've been really working on socializing him, and I think I've succeeded a little too well. I may have damaged him a little mentally and emotionally. :-) He's rather obsessed with me now, he follows me around if he gets the chance and wants nothing more than to climb on me and get as close as he possibly can. Ideally as close as this, all the time. Click to enlarge.

It's not entirely normal ... like for instance, showing him things has gotten to be really impossible now. If I'm holding him I can't get him interested in anything, almost. It only works if it's something edible that he likes. Other than that, usually no. He used to show much more interest in objects that I showed him, he would sniff at them, maybe touch them, sometimes even try to bite at them. But not anymore. Now he just wants to look at me. :-D Seriously - he'll squirm around any which way to try to look at my face instead of whatever else I'm trying to get him interested in. It's weird. I've always noticed how these animals are so aware of it whenever they're getting human attention. Which makes sense, since captive turtles get their food from humans; they benefit from being aware of some basics of our behavior. But Raphael's really taking it to extremes. I've always said that he's a little weirdo, but now he's living up to that, big time. I literally can't go into the guest room - his room :-) - without him practically throwing himself out of the pond* and running after me. Twolegs twolegs twolegs!! Look at me twolegs!! I'm here twolegs!! Looklooklookatme!!

I'm really glad turtles don't have vocal chords.

*That is, if he's even in the pond, and not waiting just inside the door as he has gotten into the habit of doing pretty much every single day when I get home. o_O

Turtle cuteness

Freshwater turtles do a lot of cute things, but the perhaps cutest thing of all is when they yawn. They are beyond adorable when they yawn. :-) It's a dream of mine to get a picture of one of my little guys yawning - maybe one day I will achieve this, but it's far from easy. They never do it when I have the camera ready. At least, almost never. Hah! It's not quite what I wanted - it's not a still image - but at least it's a yawn, on camera. Look how cute he is. Aw.



Fullscreen here.

Turtle confusion

There was a blackout here tonight - at about a quarter to seven everything just went black. I thought it was one of my fuses that had blown out, but when I went out into the hall it was all dark. The whole neighborhood. :-o That is pretty rare ... it hasn't happened as far as I'm aware in all the time I've lived here, and that's going on five years. I was pretty worried ... it is really cold out now and with no heating, how cold would it get inside? Too cold for the little guys, I think ... so I was worried about that, but there wasn't really anything I could do except wait. So I lit some candles and curled up with a good book.

By the time this happened - the blackout, I mean - it was already dark outside, so of course it got totally dark here in the living room immediately. This was rather confusing for the little fellows. Usually when the light goes out in their tank, it's the basking light first and then the main lights a few hours later ... and when the latter goes dark there's usually some lamps lit elsewhere in the room, so it doesn't go completely dark right away. But that's what happened now. Henrik stood on the bark island and stretched his neck out in this really funny way, trying to look around maybe ... I shone a flashlight in the tank and they came over to beg. Then of course after a little while they went to sleep. That's what you do when it goes dark, obviously. I couldn't blame them.

But then after about one and a half hour the lights came back in the hall, and I fiddled around with the fuse box and got my own lights working again too. Some of the lamps had been on in the living room when the power died, so when I went back in, of course there was light there. And Henrik and Herman were so confused ... !! LOL!! They were lying side by side on the bark island and had obviously just woken up, and they were looking around themselves like ... wut?? :-D Night just started, and now it's day again? Whut? I went to pet them and they threw themselves in the water, they were really out of it. :-D Wish I had filmed it, it was really funny.

Raphael was confused too; he had more light since the streetlamps outside shine in through the window in that room. But still it seemed to be rather strange that his basking lamp switched off, then on, then off again, then on ... I had to reset the timers on all their lights, because obviously the blackout threw off the setting on those. So this was a strange night for my four-legged friends. :-D

Alas, this is not a recent photo. :-(

Happy birthday, damnit!

Growl. Today is Herman's birthday, he is seven years old today, and I was going to post a picture of him doing something cute and be all cheerful and happy. Also a picture of a Keanu-related ATC that I made, just to keep on topic. But now there's a problem with Blogger so I can't get my pictures to load, so, no luck. Damnit.

Well, what are you gonna do. Happy 7th, little fella. Here's to many more. :-)

In the meantime, the rest of you can read this Keanu interview. It's good, you'll like it. :-)

Turtle walkies

The weather was fantastic here last week, so Anne Ida and I thought we'd make the most of it and try to combine two semi-irreconcilable concepts - a picnic and turtle walkies. It went pretty well, just with more walking than you'd expect at a picnic. It was fascinating to observe the different behavior the four little guys exhibited ... this was Anton's first time meeting other turtles since he was separated from his siblings when he was a little dime-sized critter. We thought it might be fun for him, but it seemed to be awful. Raphael, unsurprisingly, was awfullest.

Since it was a picnic, of course we had food, and as a natural result of this, Herman didn't wander very far. He generally sticks pretty close to me when we're out anyway, but this time he can't have walked more than a fourth of the distance Henrik did. As for Anton, sheesh, he managed a turtle marathon. :-) Herman was quite enamored of this tomato, since it was the same color as the feeding tub, but alas, it resisted his attempts to devour it. I wish I'd gotten a shot of him actually biting at it, but no such luck.

Henrik turns away from the camera a lot, which is usually annoying ... but at least here it shows off some of the layers of pollen he collected in his turtleneck ;-) and on his face as he was walking around.

Anton seems to hate having his picture taken ... he's forever squirming away from the camera. I took a number of crappy shots of him, but look at this one, it's adorable! Although you will notice that he was being physically restrained.

Spot the turtle. Raphael likes to burrow underneath things and, ideally, tip them over.

Turtles eating scallops

Today was a feeding day for my little guys and I think Raphael was hungry ... I've been sitting in my chair journaling a whole stack of books on behalf of OsloS-OBCZ after the BookCrossing meetup this afternoon, and he came out into the living room twice to check if there was anything to eat. :-D

Here they all are eating scallops. This wasn't tonight but a few weeks ago. They just got their regular boring food tonight. :-)

Herman climbing and falling

I spent a lot of time outside with the turtles in September ... more time just in that month than in all of the preceding summer, in fact. Or maybe I should say 'summer'. :-) Now though there's no chance I would let them put even their little noses out of doors. Winter is coming. :-) So I'm glad I have all my photos and videos from their lawn adventures to tide me over till next spring.

Here's Herman climbing their favorite tree, and then trying to get out of it, with mixed results. (No, he wasn't hurt in any way. :-)

Male or female?

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I'd made a video with Herman - a useful one, for a change. :-) Here it is. It's about how you can tell the sexes apart in turtles of the Chinemys species. It covers pretty much all the points you need to tell the sex of your Chinemys turtle. Only thing missing is that I only have males to show and no female. But there are some crucial features that the latter will be lacking that should mean you'll easily be able to tell anyway.

So does it matter which sex a captive freshwater turtle is? Yes, definitely, and for three reasons. One applies to all of them, and the others to ... not all species, but a lot. The last two reasons first: Size. A lot of freshwater turtles have significant sexual dimorphism - that is, physical differences between the sexes. Since these animals are oviparous, the females tend to be larger. And in Chinemys species, this size difference can be significant. As I mention in the video, any Chinemys larger than about 6" shell length will probably be female. But the females can also get a lot bigger than that. Worst case scenario the female will be twice the size of the male or more. o_O This has an impact on the enclosure you need to provide for your turtle - of course all captive turtles should be given as much space as possible, but a female Chinemys will require more space than a male.

If you have more than one specimen, the sex distribution is also important. Say one female and three or four males - that will usually be very unpleasant for the female, as she will receive a tremendous amount of attention from the males. The courtship may be quite intensive and the males may injure the female ... or, if the size difference is extreme, the female may get fed up with the constant nagging and injure or even kill the males. :-( So you'll want to consider carefully if you're going to mix the sexes.

Finally the last and most important reason why you need to know the sex of your turtle. An obvious reason, but still: Female turtles lay eggs. :-) I talk about this in the video, so I won't get into it here, but if you have a female turtle - of any species - make sure you provide proper laying opportunities for her. Egg binding is a very serious condition and it may kill your pet. :-(

Quote of the Week, &c.

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.
Albert Einstein

This is a really interesting quote, IMO. It highlights one of the typical flaws of religious argumentation ... even though Einstein is arguing against religion, I know. I mean, I agree with him. Obviously. :-) But it's interesting that even such a great thinker at least this once fell into this very typical trap - he can't imagine it, so it can't be real. That's something creotards will often claim as an argument against evolution - they don't understand it, they don't see how it's possible, so then it can't be real and/or valid. But of course a failure of human understanding proves nothing except that human understanding sometimes fails. Even if you're Albert Einstein. :-)

A rhetorical question: Why do some people feel the need to jump down the throat of anyone who disagrees with them, even if they disagree politely and without offensive language? And can doing so be blamed on supposedly having ADD?

But more importantly, it's Herman's birthday today! (Or hatching day, whatever. :-) Yay! My little critter is six years old today. Aw. My special little guy. :-) As a birthday treat, he's going to get his usual dinner. Hey, he only has the hindbrain, he doesn't understand about birthdays. He's also getting to star in a Youtube video on how to differentiate between the sexes in the Chinemys species. I'm uploading it now, it's just taking forever.

Here he is a couple of days ago getting out of the small travel cage after one of these incredibly boring treatments he's been having - the last one was yesterday, so fingers crossed. :-)

This and that

Something I need to get off my chest ... and some other things that aren't very important. :-)

First things first. Canal Digital suck. Darn them all to heck! They're my cable company, not by choice but because my, what, housing coop has a deal with them. OK, whatever. Earlier this year it all went digital, so we all had to get decoders. Now yesterday they'd scheduled some software update on the damn thing, which I was told to install when I turned the thing on to watch an old episode of Futurama. So I did, and it all went well. Or so I thought. >:-( I had the choice at one point to not install it - alas, the beauty of hindsight - but I let the chance slip through my fingers. Damn my trusting nature! The next time I tried to use my DVD player, to set it up for a recording, the signal was gone. Or whatever it is. The player works just fine, but the screen is black. Nothing to see here. And it's the same thing if I try to watch a DVD. The player does its job but the TV shows nothing. Every cable is still connected and so on, I've checked that, of course. It's got to be the decoder. Which I never wanted in the first place! I tried calling their customer service, but, what a surprise, they can't do anything to help me. There's nothing they can do. Fuck that shit. I sent an angry email. And it won't be the last, till this is fixed. I asked the woman who claimed to be in customer service whether I couldn't just disconnect the fucking decoder, and she said, Well, yes, but then you'll miss out on ... whatever boring channels I get through that thing ... you'll only have the regular 15 channels. Oh no, only 15 channels!! How will I survive!! No matter how many channels you have there's hardly anything worth watching in any case. I never even wanted whatever channels I get through that stupid box! But of course when I try to disconnect it the TV image becomes all fuzzy ... and I still can't get anything from the player. Maybe I didn't do it right. I need someone to look at this who understands about TVs and cables and connections and things. trilltrall, I'm looking at you ... ;-)

I'm actually really mad about this, though. The one thing I really need, or at least want, the TV for is rendered impossible by something that I never wanted or needed or even asked for. And then they tell me that there's nothing they can do, even though they're the ones who caused it. Oh yes, of course: The update can't be uninstalled, that's impossible. Growl.

This is especially annoying because of a weird coinkydink: Has anyone seen the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy? It was on TV here last year or whenever, and I thought it was pretty funny ... and a few days ago I thought to myself that I wish I'd recorded it, because I would like to see it again. Well, guess what's on TV tonight?? And I'll have to stay up till like 2:30 in the morning to see the whole thing, because now I can't record it! Darn it all to heck! >:-(

Ahem. In other news, I saw something really weird yesterday afternoon - a wooden train. o_O I know, what the hell is that? But I really think I saw it. I was on another train leaving Skøyen station ... or was it Lysaker? No, I think it was Skøyen. Yeah, must have been. There was another train on one of the other sets of tracks, pulling into the station ... or maybe it was just going to pass by, I don't know, I couldn't tell, we were a bit too far away from the platform by then. I was on my way to Sandvika ... a friend of mine was part of the municipal revue out there, he acted and sang in it and he also wrote some of the skits, so I went with a couple of other friends to see him. It was fun, and pretty impressive ... I mean, they're obviously amateurs, but still, they've put this all together as amateurs and in their spare time, and it's really entertaining. Some really good music. I enjoyed it ... and of course it's fun to see a friend on stage. :-D

He's the one in the middle, obviously. :-) But where was I. Oh yeah.

I saw this other train that looked like it was wood-panelled. It was so fancy, it had decorations on it and everything. There was lettering on the side of the cars - three or four cars altogether - that said DINING CAR and whatnot. But who the hell has a wood-panelled train?? Isn't that incredibly impractical? I mean, maintenance and so on? Maybe it's the royal train ... but I thought that was red. o_O I've never seen a wooden train before. :-D

Also yesterday, Herman did something soo cute. He's spending a lot of time in the smallest travel cage these days, because of the treatment for his infection ... and he's not enjoying it, it's boring!! Yesterday it was so boring that he fell asleep in broad daylight. I've never seen him do that without being stuffed full of food. When I picked him up from the cage he was all sleepy and rubbing his eyes. Awww. <3

I spent this afternoon at Meny at Carl Berner, giving out free samples of Ubuntu Cola. The world's only fair trade cola. :-) Yeah, it was part of my volunteer work at Friends. It went pretty well, or according to the boss, very well. I was going to be there for two hours, it ended up being more like two and a half ... I decided when I got there that my goal was going to be 100, ie, to get 100 people to try this relatively new soft drink. (It's a UK product made with fair trade sugar from Malawi, and it's been on the market for only about two years; only 17 months in Norway.) I ended up with at least 117. There were little crowds at some points so I may have misremembered and missed counting some. Then when the boss arrived and said that it looked like I was doing well, I said I sure was and asked him to guess how many samples I'd given out ... and he guessed 20. o_O So I must be a natural. ;-)

Of course I did this out of the goodness of my heart and didn't expect anything for it, but I got something anyway. Unfortunately I don't drink cola, fair or unfair. But I know that I have friends who do. ;-) So those of you who are within reasonable distance (I'm not shipping this stuff through the mail), let me know, and one of these five cans of delicious Ubuntu Cola may just have your name on it. ;-)

Turtles at the vet's

I took the turtles to the vet today ... something I've been meaning to do for ages, but haven't gotten around to (what else is new), but then I finally got the push I needed, on Monday I think it was, to get up off my butt and actually do it. I wanted just a checkup on Henrik and Raphael, because I haven't been to the vet with them at all since I got them, and there were a few little things that I wanted her to look at. Then Herman, he's had this weird little patch of ... I don't know what exactly, or at least I didn't until today ... on his shell above the back of his neck. When I was handling him on Monday, at feeding time, and I started to think that maybe this little patch had gotten a little bit bigger. :-o So I thought that as soon as I can get in, I'm going to the vet now. And this morning I put them all in the travel cage and off we went. :-)

Raphael behaved badly at the vet's office, alas. His desperate and endless attempts to escape the cage got everyone's attention. I finally had to let him out to walk it off a little. :-) He just hates that cage so much, I don't know what it is. He absolutely flat out refuses to settle down in it. He was constantly just trying to escape the whole time we were there. But the vet praised him though, she said that he seemed like such a sweetie because although he was clearly unhappy with the situation, and wanted very much to get away from the place and from her, he didn't show the least hint of aggression. And that's true, he's not at all aggressive, he never bites from anger. He'll hiss at you if he gets really mad, that's the worst he's done. :-) So yeah, she's right, he's a grouch, but he's a sweetie deep down. ;-)

Henrik was a little anxious, he didn't enjoy the subway ride at all, but wasn't too upset at being there, and Herman of course took it all in his stride like always. That little critter just knows no fear. :-) The vet examined all of them and I was reassured about most of the issues I've been ... not worried about, I guess, but thinking about. Raphael has some small 'pockmarks' on his shell that get better incredibly slowly but don't get any worse either ... that's apparently well within the normal range and nothing to worry about as long as they stay completely hard and are completely dry when, well, dry. :-) The weird little hard thingummy in the side of his neck is basically some of the cartilage in his larynx that's been displaced somehow ... either he just hatched like that, or it's the result of some injury ... I'm thinking the latter, because I don't remember that he had this condition when I got him, and he's had a lot of little accidents in the time that I've had him. He's taken a lot of falls. :-) But he obviously has no pain from it, and he has no problems withdrawing his head completely, so it's not an issue. But at least now I know what it is. :-)

The vet didn't think that Henrik is too fat - of course this was the morning of a feeding day when she saw him, so he hadn't eaten, but she said that he seems to be a very healthy weight, and he just looks fat sometimes because his skin is so thick. The other issue with him she didn't get to see, it's the way that he sometimes foams at the mouth a bit when he's walked a lot in the sun, and how his eyes tear sometimes too, again, in the same situations. But she wasn't worried, because he breathes normally, his nose isn't runny, he never wheezes or squeaks when he breathes. So, he got a clean bill of health. :-)

The real issue was Herman and his little mystery. I've worried a bit about his shell, but the vet says it looks fine except for that little patch. His nuchal scute, get this, fell off (!!) a while back ... now that really had me worried, and then that little weird spot showed up. The vet said that the scute falling off isn't normal but also isn't dangerous. As long as the shell is hard and solid it's nothing to worry about. She took two scrapings of the patch on his shell - one of them she's going to send in to wherever they make cultures of these things, and the other one she looked at under her own microscope. Turns out that it is a small fungal infection. :-o My precious!! Regardless of whatever the culture shows - it'll take about a week to hear back on that - that infection has got to go, so I got a prescription for a fungicide which I'll use in combination with iodine twice a day for two weeks. (So it's actually a pretty good thing that I'm not working right now. ;-) I did the first treatment this afternoon and it was boring for a little turtle to have to stay cooped up in the smaller of the two travel cages for two whole hours, which is how long he'll have to be drydocked after every single treatment, morning and afternoon. Alas, my precious!! But hopefully we'll get rid of that little infected patch, which is exactly what I set out to do this morning. :-)

The poor unfortunate prisoner languishes in his cell ...

LEMME OUT LEMME OUT LEMME OUT LEMME OUT!!

See, here's what I mean, he foams at the mouth. And you can see his eyes are very moist too, they're running. But this only happens when he's walked a lot in the heat and is dry and tired and breathing hard, so I guess that's the reason. The vet thinks so, anyway. :-)

I made a video, too. :-)

Turtle walkies May 2009

I was going to just write a lot today too, but then I figured that maybe it's time for some pictures, actually, after that long post yesterday. :-) So today's post will just be a bunch of pictures of my little four-legged friends on excursions to our front lawn. These were taken on two different occasions this month. I wonder how many pictures I've taken of the little guys over the three years that I've had them? No, scratch that, I don't want to know ... ;-)

Herman sniffing my shoe.

Hello, twolegs!

There were lots of seeds in the air today ... I guess they must have been dandelion seeds, although it seems pretty early for that, so I don't know. Herman walked into a tangle of them, and was not happy to get them in his eyes.

HALP!

Henrik the explorer.

Making his way through the plant life.

Those dandelions didn't seem that big before I plopped Henrik down in the middle of them.

Peeping around the corner.

Hiya!

Raphael dusted with a little pollen from walking in the grass.

A turtle's-eye view.

Here I am!!

Out the other side ...

Aw, look at his little mustache-looking thing that he's got there. :-D

In other news, today is kind of a date to remember for me. It's 20 years since I got my dog. My first and so far only dog ... and since I'm quite allergic to them she may well have been the first and last. :-( She was a wonderful dog though. Her name was Ronja and she was just so sweet and good-tempered and adorable. She died in September 2001, when she was twelve and a half years old. I still miss her every now and then. My little sweetie. :-) Here's a picture of us together that my friend M. took. Aw, my little doggie ... :-)

My three turtles

In case anyone's wondered what I did with the turtles while I was in Poland, the answer is nothing ... they were home alone the whole time. That's what makes reptiles such great pets ... just provide a setup with whatever they need and they don't need you checking on them constantly. If I'm gone for less than a week I don't bother to get anyone to come by and feed them and so on. I just gave them an extra meal on Friday - and it was a pretty big one too - and they were fine till Wednesday night. They were really happy to be fed last night though. ;-)

Today's post is my (so far) latest YouTube video ... a few minutes of my three little guys doing various turtle-y things like climbing, falling down, swimming, begging, biting, looking adorable. :-) Actually a really cute video if I do say so myself. Also with a commentary track by yours truly which makes it sound like I talk to these almost deaf animals constantly ... I don't, just when I'm interacting a lot with them, like in this video. It's all in Norwegian but I've translated it for those non-Norwegian speakers who may be interested ... see below. :-)

And no, Henrik can't really hurt himself falling over like that ... and Herman didn't get hurt when Raphael bit him, he was just startled. :-)



Translation:
Herman, don’t eat things you find on the floor! Yuck! [...] Come on, guys, do something fun! I’m filming. [...] Hello. [...] OK, I think you need to stop doing that. What are you trying to eat now? [...] OK, I’m sorry. [...] Oh no, did Henrik startle you, I mean did Herman startle you? A sad business, sad business. [...] Plop. [...] Henrik, you can’t get into the pond that way. There’s a wall there. Just here. Come on. Oh, what a stupid ... [...] Snap. [...] Was there no food after all? Alas, no ... That’s one of the blows that life will deal you, Herman. Sometimes you’re disappointed. [...] Oh no you don’t. [...] I said no! [...] You’re trying again? Oh, come on. Good boy! What a good Henrik. You did it. First time today. Up that way. [...] Oops. Well, that’ll happen when you don’t pay attention to where you’re putting your feet. [...] Hmm? Are you disappointed? Never any food. [...] Don’t give up, Henrik. You did it.

Herman so hungry ... !!!

If that twolegs doesn't give me some food soon, I'll ... I'll have to ... I'll eat my feeding tub!!!

NOM NOM NOM NOM ... !!

Turtle closeup: Herman

I was going to write another Egypt post today (seriously, I am ridiculously behind) but I just don't have the energy. My parents' computer is SO SLOW and freezes up constantly - I seriously cannot use this thing without having a book handy - it's just too annoying to work with and I feel like I'm in danger of breaking the damn thing if I sit here too long. So I'll postpone the enforced shopping in Cairo till I get home and just post some adorable turtle pictures today. I took these five days ago - it was a feeding day and I wanted to get some pictures of Herman biting my fingertips. But of course he doesn't do anything when it's convenient. ;-) I got a couple of really good pictures though, even if only one was a bitey one. :-)

MY TWOLEGS - IT HAZ A FLAVUR ... !!
Nom nom nom nom ... !!

Check out this bottom one. Is he the cutest or what. :-) I love that shot. (I was leaning down towards him with the camera and he was stretching up to get a closer look at the strange shiny thing I was holding. When I let him at it he sniffed it and then bit it. :-) KAS says that he looks like E.T. in that picture. Yeah, I can see that. :-D

Happy 5th to Herman!!!

I would say birthday, but that wouldn't be quite right since he wasn't born, but hatched. ;-) It was five years ago, though, close enough as makes no matter. I don't know whether it was actually on the 4th, I just know that he was hatched sometime in early October 2003. Anne Ida and I decided that it'd be the 4th. :-)

I've had him for two and a half years, that's one thing I know for sure. Actually one month longer than that. I got him on March 4th, 2006. His previous owner brought him here in an old ice cream container that she'd punched some holes in and lined with a wet cloth. She lives about a two hour drive away, so he'd been in there for a while ... but he wasn't any worse for wear, he was his normal happy self. :-) Just as energetic as always and of course not at all nervous or afraid. He never is. He was just happy to meet some new two-legs. Got food?? Got some food?? :-D

It was so much fun to meet him, I'd never seen a Chinemys reevesii in real life before. He was soo adorable :-) and of course it was amazing that he was so totally unafraid. Such a tiny little creature, and there were these two in comparison enormous humans, he'd never seen us before, the entire place was new to him, all the smells were strange, there was another turtle in the room that he didn't know, he'd travelled in that box for two hours ... but he just knows no fear. Coolest turtle ever. :-)

To celebrate, these are the first pictures I ever saw of him. His previous owner emailed them to me. Isn't he the cutest?? :-)

He's changed quite a bit since I got him; his carapace has darkened so much, it's so weird to compare these old pictures to how he looks now.

Just look at that face. Aww.

My precious ... !! :-)

Two turtles begging

This is the first video I've shot with the new camera. Better??

That's Herman who's in the frame to begin with, and Henrik who comes swimming in from the right after a few moments.



What they're doing is they're begging for food. They eat every other day, and today is a feeding day, so they're hungry (well, more so than usual; they are allegedly always hungry ;-). I hand feed them and as a result they exhibit the learned behavior that you see here - they associate human fingers with food. Strongly, in fact. So when they want to show that they want something to eat, they bite my fingers. Or try to bite them through the glass walls of their tank, as you see here. :-) Because food comes out of my fingers, that's where it comes from in their world. :-)