Officially a pet!

Congratulations to us! We officially now have a new pet (besides the 5 fish)!
Mirek thinks our Yertle, the Turtle was a late summer hatchling and would not survive the winter, we decided to keep it for the cold months. That meant a trip to the pet store!

How ready are the sales people sell you all wonderful things! I asked for some advice, and a few minutes later ended up with a full cart of things absolutely crucial (according to the sales man) to raise an aquatic turtle at home. As I was pushing the cart along the isle, he kept on putting more and more things into my cart while explaining things and giving hints. I felt like in a trance under some kind of spell. I could hardly keep up with noticing the prices on those things and feeling that my blood pressure was rising rapidly. "Maybe Yertle should go back to where it came from!", was all I thinking at that moment after estimating the bill for over a hundred dollars.

The sales man politely escorted me to the cash register and assured me that we were all set!
Not so fast, mister! The girls did want to try to have Yertle as a pet, so I decided to see what could be eliminated from the cart that was not so crucial for Yertle's survival! All the plastic stones, decor, and a divider went back to their shelves. We live in the woods, for God's sake! We'll get a real rock and a piece of wood for it's tank habitat!The air thermometer and a lamp were switched for much cheaper ones, a bag of gravel went back as well, since I remember to have half a bag leftover from when we were setting up the fish tank just recently.

Now it was more doable, money wise, I mean! I managed to cut the expenses almost in half! Our Tata works too hard for us, so we don't want to spend the money unwisely.

It had been three days Yertle didn't eat. But when we put it into it's new home and let it get used to the surroundings a bit, the little guy got quite an appetite! Mirek is having a lot of fun feeding the turtle with live worms, and the girls also feed it with dried mini krill and shrimp. Yertle is a carnivore, so no salads or carrots for him! Give him the flesh...