There are few things in life that are more satisfying than lying in bed next to one’s turtle and listening to the sound of him crunching on dark leafy greens. My turtle’s tank is opaque, but I put it alongside my bed so that I can always sit up and check on him. Last night, he was making all the commotion, trying frantically to get out of his tank. He does that when there’s something wrong with his arrangement and he’s decided to seek out better conditions elsewhere. The temperature of his enclosure was about right, so I figured he must be hungry. I tried to go to sleep but it was impossible with the constant thuds and crashes coming from the tank. I knew he wasn’t starving but it was still heartbreaking. Saturdays are dark leafy green day and I had planned to order Instacart anyway. Every Saturday we alternate between collard greens and dandelion greens, unless lightning strikes and I can get to the Asian market in the Big City to buy him ash gourd (which is not a leaf but it is green and he loves it so it counts). So I sat up, turned on the light, pulled out my laptop, placed my order, and scheduled it to arrive as early this morning as possible. My turtle didn’t understand that I had addressed the issue, although I hoped that my more-confident affect reassured him a little bit. I decided that the problem would have to be solved with a YouTube video, which is how I solve 99% of my problems in life lately. I’m sure my readers will be as shocked as I was to discover that there are NO videos on YouTube of white noise for turtles. So we had to listen to this one that was made mostly for dogs:
For a little while, it seemed like he was soothed. I mean like it worked for about one minute. After that, he was over it and resumed his efforts to become a runaway. However, since the volume was turned all the way up, it did drown out the sound of a crazy turtle jumping around, so ONE of us got some sleep. Our Instacart got here shortly after I woke up, so I gave my tiny turtle two collard green leaves that are each bigger than he is. I already knew what he would do with them: he eats the woody stem ONLY. He uses the rest as tiki huts and sticks his nose out adorably to beg for more stems.
Interestingly, although I wrote two posts ago about how I’m not good at routine, the exception to this is with my turtle. I’m not perfect, but I basically stick to his weekly schedule more or less. Mondays and Thursdays he gets pellets, Tuesdays and Fridays he gets his water changed, Wednesdays he gets sweet potato, and Saturdays he gets collards or dandelion greens. And Sundays are for rest. This has been helpful to me as well because I’ve been eating as vegan as possible lately so I definitely need to be incorporating greens and not eating just only rice and beans all the time, and collards are great in smoothies. Dandelion greens are bitter UNLESS you add peanut butter, avocado, maple syrup, and sea salt along with whatever fruit and liquid you’re going to use. It took me an awfully long time to learn the formula but now I love dandelion green smoothies. My turtle always gives me the side eye as I sip my drink and he has to just eat plain greens. I point out that he is a turtle and there is no salad dressing in the wild. He points out that I am a glorified bonobo and they don’t eat dressing either. And I have to just acknowledge the injustice of the situation even if I choose not to do anything about it.
This is how my turtle and I are on a daily basis. The other night he was basking when I was going to go to sleep, so I left his light on overnight and the look he gave me in the morning was like looking into the incarnate eye of sleep deprivation. He had a terrible day that day trying to escape, until finally I let him out of his tank to roam around but when the time came for him to go back to his little house, he was just as unhappy as ever. Then I gave him pellets and he was fine. Routines are made to be broken.
This is a blog about apostasy and my turtle but since I was inpatient I wasn’t able to write much about my turtle, so I’m planning to make up for that now. I would use his name but it’s unusual and I’m trying to keep any identifiable information about me completely off this blog. I also want to write eventually about my siblings who I’ve given up on for the time being because they ignore the vast majority of my correspondence and on the rare occasions that they do reply, it’s pretty much the most vile and nasty responses they could possibly produce. This has been a whole thing and has been decidedly bad for my mental health. However, I’m dealing with it and it’s more fun to write about my turtle than the loss of my siblings. Because my turtle is the best turtle of all turtles and I am the luckiest momma out there!
