Turtle Thursday: Sea Monster!

With work hammering the life out of us nonstop, I wasn't even sure if I would have any more Turtle Thursdays until after the tax deadline, which is April 17th for New York. But I managed to snag this very blurry and out of focus pic of a sea monster approaching me, likely planning on maiming, then killing, then devouring my fresh carcass. Either that or it's just a bad pic of Dante taken with the "flat foto" cam. The pic turned out with a "feel to it" so I decided to post it anyway.

Turtle Fact of the Day

I was intending to write a bit about turtle mating, as it's the springtime, but decided to shelf that idea until next week. Something came up over the weekend with my big girl, Snappy. I'll go into the mating process next time, but I will tell you that it's not pretty, and somewhat violent for turtles. Females frequently end up with all manner of injuries. So the mating rituals had left Snappy with a rather bad injury startlingly close to her eye. It was really a superficial would despite how ugly it was. The best treatment would be to remove her from the tank and dry dock her for a say. Some triple antibiotic ointment would do wonders. You'd be surprised at the progress one day of cream and dryness could deliver.

There's one problem, you're dealing with an injured animal. Snappy is my oldest, largest, and maybe the most loving and responsive of my herd. You call her name and SHE WILL COME TO YOU! She loves being handled, the further from the tank, the better. But last weekend when I decided to dry her out and medicate her eye, she was scared and protective. I had a bit of Neosporin on the tip of my finger and I went to apply it to the injury. Normally Snappy would let me touch her without a problem, but things changed, she was injured.

RULE: ALWAYS BE EXTRA CAREFUL WHEN DEALING WITH INJURED ANIMALS. Generally when animals are hurt, they are scared and may not react normally.

That said, Snappy bit me for the first time ever. We're talking about a big, strong, and powerful adult female red ear slider. People lose fingers to the powerful jaws of turtles. Snappy, of course, realized it was me and released my finger rather quickly, but not so soon that it didn't break the skin and cause a minor blood blister. That was Saturday. I still have a bruise in that spot.

I don't blame Snappy. She was only trying to protect her injury, and I should've known better. Never underestimate an injured animal. Be careful!