Toby the turtle
loves his pond and heating rock
and seems quite content
Cori MacNaughton
These photos were taken shortly after Toby, our rescue turtle, came to live with us, after Marek found him in a truck stop parking lot, literally under his tire. If he had moved his truck, even a few inches, the little guy would have been history.
So I promptly went and bought him a small aquarium, and outfitted it with plants and mosses from the edge of our woods, a shallow soup bowl for a pond, and a few rocks and duckweed. The heating rock had yet to be added when these photos were taken.
We're not precisely sure what species he is, though clearly he is native to this region; he looks like a red-eared slider, apart from obviously lacking the red markings on the sides of his head. There are several closely related native species.
We're also not completely sure of his gender, although I've had turtles before, and I do know that females have thicker tails than do males, the better for laying eggs. So I'm inclined to think that he's a male, as his tail is pretty slender, though he's still pretty young to tell for certain.
In any case, as reptiles grow slowly, he's not much bigger now than he was in the photos, but we're getting ready to give him bigger digs. He is currently in a 5-gallon aquarium, and we'll probably move him up to a 20 or 29 gallon aquarium next, complete with a lot more plants, as aquatic turtles eat as many plants as they do fish and bugs.
An aquarium is the best home for him, still, as it is protection for him against the cats, who would otherwise make a meal of him, which would make me sad. Though at this point, since they know they can't get to him, they have little interest, as does Lolo. Which is a good thing.
I did think it was funny when Marek named him Toby, as the first thing I though of was Toby Tyler, from Eddie and the Cruisers; when Eddie was being a jerk to Frank Ridgeway, aka "Wordman," after seeing him kissing his girlfriend Joann, and kept referring to him as "Toby Tyler" onstage, rather than calling him by his real name.
For the record, "Toby Tyler" was the lead character in a children's book from the 1880s, which Walt Disney made into a film in 1960, which would clearly have been known to all the characters in the film, as most of the action takes place in 1963.
Yeah, I'm a music and film geek. Go figure. I was born in Hollywood, California. It comes naturally. ;-)
Anyway, our Toby tried to hibernate a couple of times starting last fall, but seemed quite pleased when he realized that he didn't have to, as he gets fed regularly, with duckweed, commercial turtle food, and meal worms that I'm raising specifically for him.
And he LOVES his heat rock. He's a lucky little turtle. ;-)
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