Splash

Several years ago, a family at a church we were attending had a turtle thrown over ts back fence. They did not realize she was aquatic, apparently not noticing the webbed claws, and kept her in a dog kennel for a while, where she bit the dogs until they left her alone. They also couldn't figure out why she kept throwing herself into the dogs' water dish.

My parents decided that to adopt her, and brought her home in a cardboard box. You can't see it from the picture, but she has a gorgeous belly. It looks rather like an orange shield, divided into six portions. I don't know how old she is; the age that I have put reflects how long we have had her. She can't be very old, though, as she is still growing a lot.

Hibernation for painted turtles involves being frozen in a block of ice in Minnesota. Splash has no ice, nor is she in Minnesota, so she sort of naps for four to six months out of the year. She doesn't eat much during that time, and mostly just sits on one of her rocks and dozes. During the summer she likes to swim around, climbing up the rocks and sliding back down into the water and playing with the water filter. She also has a Van Gogh print of boats that we have propped up behind her tank for her to look at, so she doesn't get bored.

Her pellets come in a green canister. I don't know what they are called, as Splash is sleeping while I am typing this, and I don't want to disturb her by opening the drawer over which her tank is situated. She mostly eats them, as well as the occasional lettuce leaf. When we were trying to figure out what she ate, we put a fish in the tank. Splash kept it as a pet for a while before my dad cleaned out her tank for the first time, upsetting her so much that she ate the fish, and was sad for a while. We have not repeated the experiment.