Creating Turtle Paradise - The Beginning

With SiSi came Skeeter the turtle. He is a red slider water turtle and he has always lived in an aquarium. SiSi got Skeeter when he was the size of a silver dollar. He is quite a bit bigger than that now and the aquarium seemed very small.

First thing we did was build him a little outside area with a kiddie pool, because we happened to have two of those hanging around. We put up a fence, added rocks on the bottom and also a fern to make him feel cozy.

He escaped. Sadness was felt everywhere. We were forlorn and I felt really bad because I was the one who really pushed to have the outdoor place for him to live.

I was determined to find him so I searched and searched. It was the third day and I was ready to give up. But I decided to look one more place, down the hill a bit in a bunch of weeds. OK so I was really mostly thinking of weeding to cheer myself up. I was raking away and saw something. Hm... was it another turtle ceramic thing? NO! It was a very sad and dry Skeeter. So I rushed him back to his pool, and put him in with some turtle food. He chomped away. And seemed happy to be rescued.

I thought-- maybe he is lonely. Maybe he needs some goldfish friends. I rushed over to the pet store and bought him some little fishie friends. We always put them in the water in their bag to adjust when we had gotten them before - so I did that -- and then I had to rush off to work.

I asked SiSi to open the fish bag and put the fishies in the water with Skeeter. She called back and said-- but there are only 3 fish in the bag and a big hole in it. Uhoh -- Skeeter had eaten 2 of his new friends.

We put the other three in with him and they happily swam around all together.