The Smoldering Tortoise...
...Or How I Nearly Caused a House Fire Today.
Here's Shelly, our pet tortoise. We adopted her two days before Christmas. My cousin was keeping her in his car because she got kicked out of campus housing. I felt bad for the frozen thing, so I offered to keep her here and feed her lots of yummy lettuce. I bought a tank and some lamps and other turtle essentials. It was fun and different to have a reptile, sort of a novelty to watch such an ancient creature waddle around. I was really glad I took her on until about a month later when she POOPED. It smells worse than a toddler diaper. Even worse was a few days ago when I found some of it in my favorite slippers--AFTER I put my foot it in. This is important to the story, I promise.
Yesterday I moved the 55 gallon tank--by myself--out of my room and into the bonus room because of the stench. Plus, she spends all night burrowing around and scratching. It's no life. I could spend another post talking about how mentally ill this turtle is, combined with my innate ability to attract neurotic creatures. Anyway, I came home today and smelled smoke upstairs. It took a bit to run around and frantically search for the source. It was the turtle tank!! The heat lamp lodged itself loose in the move yesterday and fell on the bark. It's coconut, not wood, but there were red hot, smoky embers by the time I found it. Shelly was sitting right next to it, basking the heat like a complete idiot. Luckily I found it in time before a lot of harm was done, but now the whole upstairs reeks like smoked bacon and Shelly probably has smoke damaged lungs. Poor baby.
She hated posing for this picture. What you can't see is that her underbelly is encrusted with POOP, which only comes off if I scrape it off, making her hiss at me.
Anyone want a tortoise?
Here's Shelly, our pet tortoise. We adopted her two days before Christmas. My cousin was keeping her in his car because she got kicked out of campus housing. I felt bad for the frozen thing, so I offered to keep her here and feed her lots of yummy lettuce. I bought a tank and some lamps and other turtle essentials. It was fun and different to have a reptile, sort of a novelty to watch such an ancient creature waddle around. I was really glad I took her on until about a month later when she POOPED. It smells worse than a toddler diaper. Even worse was a few days ago when I found some of it in my favorite slippers--AFTER I put my foot it in. This is important to the story, I promise.
She hated posing for this picture. What you can't see is that her underbelly is encrusted with POOP, which only comes off if I scrape it off, making her hiss at me.
Anyone want a tortoise?
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