Personal Vlog: Turtles

Feb 15, 2004

We don't have a normal array of pets. We have a horse (if you can call a horse a pet; at any rate, he doesn't live with us), and we have two turtles, Poirot and Marple. We don't know their sexes, so they're not M. Poirot and Miss Marple, just Poirot and Marple.

We do know their species: red-eared sliders, originating along the Mississippi and in the American south, the most common kind of pet store turtle. I did some Internet research after we got them and, had I realized beforehand what I was in for, I probably would have nixed the idea. But we have them now, and I'm responsible for keeping them alive so, unlike the 99.9% of baby red-eared sliders sold worldwide, these two are still thriving after three years. They're about five inches long now, and they have every chance of living their allotted one score and ten years, and reaching over 14" in length. By which time, we had better be living in a house with a garden so we can keep them outdoors in a pond most of the year.

For now, they live in a glass tank with a plastic island they can crawl up on, to bask in the rays of their special ultra-violet turtle lamp. And, when it's warm, we let them have the crawl of the house for exercise and to dry off for a bit (something this species needs to do).

They're fairly dull, as pets go, but even turtles have distinct personalities. When we take them out of the tank, Poirot is an explorer, trundling from room to room as rapidly as a turtle can. Marple immediately goes into hiding under a bed or in any other dark nook, and eventually signals her desire to return home by attempting to climb through a wall. I am not sure why she thinks that her tank is always on the other side of whatever wall she happens to be in front of, but I have also seen this turtle walk straight into a door, so perhaps she's just not very bright. Or maybe she is bright enough to have figured out that, if she makes clunking noises long enough to get my attention, I will come and take her home from wherever she happens to be.

Poirot seems to like to be where the people are. In the course of her explorations, she will eventually find me in my office, and then circle around me for a while. Both of them sometimes contemplate my toes as if wondering whether I'd be tasty, but so far they have not made the experiment. They will bite fingers stuck into their tank - anything in the water, as far as they're concerned, is food.