MetaChat - There's a turtle in a bucket on my desk

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03 January 2006

There's a turtle in a bucket on my desk ... Well not really my desk, my cube-neighbor's desk. My co-worker took her to the vet this morning and now she's hanging out in the technology department waiting to go home. I don't have a camera phone, so no photos. Apparently her name is Froggie (or Froggy or Froggey).

post by: matildaben at: 14:52 | 36 comments

Turtles are probably my favorite animals. I once saw a puff piece on the local news about a bunch of grade school kids who went on a field trip to the zoo to wash the giant turtles, and I swear I got misty.

I'm very strange.

posted by jonmc 03 January | 14:54

jonmc, I've seen much strange creatures than you. :)

posted by keijo 03 January | 14:58

*stranger

posted by keijo 03 January | 14:59

Damn, we never went on field trips to wash turtles.

*seethes, jealously*

what?

posted by gaspode 03 January | 14:59

What kinda turtle? Aquatic? Tortoise?

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 14:59

I didn't ask.

posted by matildaben 03 January | 15:03

I have a friend who has a three-toed box turtle that only eats rose petals. It's such a cool turtle. She calls it Squyrtle.

posted by iconomy 03 January | 15:05

I used to have two Eastern Painted turtles, one named Patches and the other named [Hugh] Jr.

They looked like this.

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 15:09

I once helped a friend move, and she had a little itty turtle named Louise. She went in the truck, and I rode the subway with Louise to her new house, and people went NUTS. Turtles are cuuuute.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 03 January | 15:11

you named your turtle after yourself, Hugh? How old were you? Old enough to start establishing your dynasty anyways.

posted by gaspode 03 January | 15:14

One time, I found a teeny-weenie little turtle and I kept him in a little box but he got away in the house and I never found him. He was sooooo cute!

You know what? Right as I was typing this, I became convinced that the reason my mother was so calm about the whole turtle adoption/loss process was that she took him and set him free and lied to me!

posted by Specklet 03 January | 15:14

Twenty-eight, gaspode. They got big enough to elude the Great Blue Heron and I moved to NYC so I had to show my love for them and set them free.

Patches (m) was a bully and Jr. (f) was a sweetheart.

They soooo cute when theya babies!

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 15:20

They had babies?!? OMG.

Wait a minute. Did you wait for the babies to get non-heron gullet sized, or did you set them free when they were small and defenseless and precious?

posted by Specklet 03 January | 15:25

There's a coffee shop in the neighborhood that's owned by some people from the NW (a coincidence? I think not...) that has turtles in the backyard garden. I love to get breakfast there and watch the turtles lounge in their little play pond. I'm not looking to start a fight or anything, but turtles are pretty cute.

Do we need to put an order in with Shan Michael Evans?

posted by safetyfork 03 January | 15:26

How big is the turtle on the desk?

I like reptiles except for alligators. One time I woke up late to go to work, was rushing around getting ready, opened the blinds to see a GIGANTIC snapping turtle moseying across the parking lot. The thing was easily small beach ball sized.

That'd be a wonderful field trip to wash the crazy turtles, jon!

posted by chewatadistance 03 January | 15:36

No, no, I pulled them from the pond when they were babies after watching the baby turtle population plummet while the heron eyrie grew one spring. They were only the size of a half-dollar then and they ran around all nimbly-pimbly-like. They freaked my brother's schipperke right out.

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 15:38

Oncet I spied a 35-pound snapper laying eggs in my parents' backyard, wrassled her into a tub, and lit out for work, hoping to call my herp vet friend over to try and collect her eggs for his incubator (increasing their chancet of survival). Only a 35-pound snapper can bust though about anything shy of a concrete wall.

Make sure you pick her up by her tail, at the base of the tail, or she'll whip her head right around and snap off a finger.

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 15:43

No, no, I pulled them from the pond...
Oh good, Hugh. I'm all gooey in-love with you, and if you let the teeny turtles die, my ardor would have to cool.

Also: I like alligators. (I grew up in Florida, what do you want.)

Also: I never washed no turtles, but I once washed a sacred baby cow with rose water. He chewed on my fingers.

posted by Specklet 03 January | 15:46

Also: I never washed no turtles, but I once washed a sacred baby cow with rose water. He chewed on my fingers.

I double-heart Specklet!

posted by tr33hggr 03 January | 15:52

I love turtles. My friend in Baltimore (coincidentally, the same friend who ~~quit~~ temporarily quit smoking by using Auntweed,) has a beautiful back garden with three box turtles living there, and one year they had babies. The babies were utterly utterly cute but alas, they had a high mortality rate and so we took the living ones to the woods in hopes that they would have a better chance there than in the tough urban environs which are populated by some extremely nasty critters, and if you've ever been in a Baltimore back alley you know to what I am referring.

posted by mygothlaundry 03 January | 15:53

When I was in high school, we had a turtle that would cross the back porch every evening at the same time (after dinner, during the dish-washing). To be sure that it was the same guy, my dad put a little fingernail-polish X on its back. We started putting food out for it. This happened several summers in a row.

Also, once as a kid while mowing the overgrown back 40, I mowed a turtle. It still makes me very sad.

posted by mudpuppie 03 January | 15:54

She is a Malayan Box Turtle. She is aquatic. She is about 6 inches or 580 grams. She is at least 9 years old.

Her owner recommends this page on turtle care, which has some pictures that are similar to what she looks like.

posted by matildaben 03 January | 15:57

Judging by your kindness here alone, mudpuppie, I'd venture that your karma's doing just fine.

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 15:58

One time, my herp vet friend took me to a reptile show in Havre de Grace, MD, where, right by the door, there were two large (8" or more) exotic aquatic turtles from, I think, Southeast Asia.

My friend was checking them out when he noticed the markings on their backs, and a little black thing.

"That's the transponder," said the salesman. "That way if your turtle gets lost, you can track it and save yourself a lot of worry."

My buddy was fit to be tied. He'd just returned from a golden frog survey in Panama and an iguana census in the Bahamas, and, unlike this fucker's other customers, knew that transponders are put on turtles by scientists tracking their movements in the wild, not by pet owners.

So I had to restrain him and we made a scene, and my friend went home and made sure the seller wouldn't be welcome at any herp shows nearby, any time soon.

posted by Hugh Janus 03 January | 16:12

Aw, thanks Hugh. I need karmic validation periodically.

posted by mudpuppie 03 January | 16:22

i like turtles.

posted by terrapin 03 January | 16:35

(coincidentally, the same friend who quit temporarily quit smoking by using Auntweed,)

Auntweed. I love it. Let's use this term more until someone puts it on the In-Jokes page on Mechawiki.

Yeah, 'pup, I'm with Hugh on your karmic standing.

posted by Specklet 03 January | 17:47

My co-worker took her to the vet this morning and now she's hanging out in the technology department waiting to go home.

Why was she at the vet? Is she ok?

posted by essexjan 03 January | 18:06

He said she hurt her foot against something in the tank, but she'll probably be fine.

posted by matildaben 03 January | 18:08

I know this is a tortoise and not a turtle, but it's still cute. And my God, it can really motor ...

posted by essexjan 03 January | 18:13

essexjan, that's awesome! Reminds me of watching a dog and a horse play tag.

posted by Specklet 03 January | 18:15

Essexjan, that turtle/tortoise is one bad motherfucker. It's my new favorite person.

posted by mudpuppie 03 January | 18:15

I'd love to see what happened next. Did he carry on guarding the shed? Is the dog still in there? Was there a fight to the death? (My money would be on the tortoise to win)

posted by essexjan 03 January | 18:17

I seriously wanted a African spurred tortoise.

posted by porpoise 03 January | 19:11

i like turtles.
they symbolize good things too.
and look especially cute flailing for the water in a mad dash for life.
i think it's the flipper flopping

posted by ethylene 04 January | 02:13

essexjan, I hope that pooch got outta the shed in time for dinner! Didn't look like he was antagonizing the tortoise; I hope he still has all his limbs.

posted by chewatadistance 04 January | 09:11

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