Conversation about this little turtle always ends with laughter as to how he - turned out she was a he - now lives his best life in a turtle sanctuary where there was a lack of males. He’s gone to be the lothario he could never be when he was, mostly, confined to barracks with us…
Thursday, April 30, 2009
I’ve been plagued a lot by CB about the potential of a pet in our home. He was of the opinion that a bowl of fish could change our lives immeasurably and I shouldn’t hold out. Imagine my delight when the children bounded home from a playdate with the news that they could ‘adopt’ a friend’s turtle on a semi-permanent basis. The father assured me that if anything happened to Pixer, said turtle, that there was no need to replace her or indeed do anything at all or, if we left these shores, she would have a home back with them.
So we were ensnared. She is now ensconced in our downstairs bathrooms where she spends many hours contemplating herself in the mirror, or is out in the garden determined to dig herself to freedom once and for all. She’s made it into the front garden once but hopefully now all exits are blocked. She’s spent what were probably two very miserable nights, outside when she’d hidden herself so well we couldn’t find her, but life seems pretty good for her. The Boy collects Rolie Polies for her, Imogen does the bath routine, and the odd offering of a snail from her erstwhile owners seems to do the trick.
It is a little disconcerting it has to be said, to go in there and be faced by this stern looking creature from some far off land but, for the most part, she’s the easiest kind of pet we could have ended up with and I only have to provide the odd bit of vegetation!’
The worst moments were when we’d fallen into bed only to remember that Oskar, the gardener, was coming first thing with his vicious strimmer. We’d be out in the yard with a torch under the bins, searching the flowerbeds, bushes, dec
k for any sight of Pixer - he was a demon for hiding. Once I attempted to leave a note when we’d searched in vain but, as Oskar attempted to communicate to the hopelessly non-Spanish-speaking client I was, he had as much English as I had Spanish. Somehow Pixer survived.
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