Working Wives & Bachelorettes: On the Second Working Day of Christmas...

On the Second Working Day of Christmas my True Love Gave to Me... Two Turtle Doves!

This theme is rather significant to me – the turtle part anyway. For as long as long as I can remember, I always had a turtle as a pet growing up. Tom Turtle was my first. My dad picked him up off the road for me when we were moving in to our new house – about 22 years ago now. Tom lived in an aquarium in my bedroom for a number of years. He was a great first pet! Easy to take care of, quiet, low maintenance. Tom was even friendly with my other animals – Michi, my rabbit, and Buttons, my dog.

Tom was a box turtle and was pretty old when we found him (apparently you can count the rings on their shells, much like a tree’s rings). Tom was adventurous – he managed to make his way off my deck (a 15ft drop) and survive… He made it all the way to the front yard where we found him making friends with a small child who was on a walk with his mom. Tom came to school with me on various occasions for show and tell. He would spend most of the day in a shoebox, but I felt so cool none the less.

Unfortunately, Tom made his way to greener fields one Christmas morning when I was in third grade. Not-so-Merry Christmas to me…

After Tom, I had other turtles… Tom II, Tammy… but none of them were the same as my original Tom, and I would end up releasing them back to the wild.

I took a hiatus as a turtle owner for a while, but when I headed to college, I decided to invest in a baby Red-eared Slider. Ferrari was about the size of a silver dollar when I got her. She lived in a little aquarium in my room and swam happily around! Two years later, on a whim I purchased another aquatic turtle, a Map Turtle, named Porsche. He was about the size of Ferrari at this point, and they lived happily together for the next year or so. Until… Ferrari quadrupled in size. Porsche; however, remained the same. They had to be separated.

Recently, Porsche passed on, joining his older brother in greener fields. He was a little trickster, that turtle. Always looking for the great escape. He must have “jumped” (for lack of a better word) out of his aquarium at least five times. He was lost in my parents’ basement for almost two days. He escaped during feeding time on a number of occasions, and twice Nick and I came home to an empty aquarium, only to find him in the bathroom and in the back spare bedroom.

I have a feeling Ferrari is going to live forever. She is the size of a dinner plate now, and continues to grow out of every aquarium we put her in. I make fun of my friends, saying that they will be crazy cat ladies when they are older, while I… I might be the crazy turtle lady.