Hi everyone. This is
Artemis the tortoise.
~
Today I’m going to tell you about two awful days. Well, one awful one, and one that just wasn't very nice, but could have been worse. Either way, first I’ll tell you about the terrible start
to the day I had about a month ago, and then I’ll tell you about the sort of bad afternoon I had
a little over a week ago.
~
So, usually in the mornings Mummy turns on my lamps, and
then she sorts my food and some fresh water for me while my vivarium is warming
up. When I’m ready, I crawl out of my
cave or tunnel – depending which I slept in that night – and go spend some time
on my basking rock under the heat lamp, where I stay until I’m warmed up enough
to go see what’s for breakfast.
But that’s not how this day started.
~
Before the lamps even got turned on, I was dug out of my
nest in the cave where I’d been sleeping, and put – still chilly from the
night’s cooler vivarium temperature, and not even awake yet – in my
playpen. I was then left there for ages
and ages, with them just coming and poking at me to make sure I was OK from
time to time – which prompted me to tuck myself in my shell in hopes they’d get
the hint and go away. Then there was a
lot of being jostled about while the playpen was being carried down some
stairs, before I spent more time waiting in it with occasional prodding, before
I finally got to go back in my vivarium.
Meanwhile, they’d apparently been emptying and pulling apart
my vivarium, because when I was finally rescued from the playpen it was to find
my vivarium and the table it stands on in a completely different spot.
~
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice spot. I’m near to a window where I can get some
natural light, and my vivarium is angled just right so I get that light and a
bit of the breeze from the window, but it’s not too chilly for me. With the lovely weather we've been having it's been just perfect. I can also see them when they’re going about
their day, so easily get their attention if I want to. Like I said, it’s a nice spot. I just don’t like how I got here.
I also don’t like that everything got cleaned the same
day. I hate the days when they clean my
vivarium, because things don’t smell right for a bit. It somehow felt even worse that they did it
on top of that awful start to the day.
So I spent a couple of days sulking and being stompy, just to show Mummy
how much I hated it all. I usually only
stay stompy on the actual day of cleaning, but I felt the rude awakening on top
of that justified some extra stompy tortoise time, so kept it up the following
day too.
~
Then, just when I was starting to think things would be back to
how they had been before, with no rude awakenings, the other thing happened:
the vet trip.
Despite it being even hot by my standards this particular day, I was forced to get up from my afternoon nap, shoved in a
plastic box with some hay and a bit of lettuce to nibble on, and jostled about while we rode in a very noisy
thing I’m told is called a taxi. I rode
in one of those to get here from the place I was at before with all the other
tortoises and reptiles, and had hoped I wouldn’t have to ride in one
again. I mean, it’s not so much the
noise – tortoises don’t exactly hear things like you humans do, since we have a
lack of ears – but the vibrations... That’s how I make sense of sounds, and the
vibrations from that taxi thing were dreadful!
Anyway, I rode in the taxi thing with Mummy, and then she
handed over the box with me in to someone.
Quite frankly, I thought at this point maybe she was getting rid of
me. I mean, why else would she do it?
But no. It turned out the other person
just wanted to poke and prod me. I gave him my best, "Who are you, and what do you think you're doing?" stare, but he ignored me, and just kept examining me. Then he talked to Mummy a bit, and gave me back to
Mummy in my box so we could go in another of those taxi things.
After that I got put back in my vivarium,
where I stomped about for a bit, dug in
for a - very late by this time - nap, and would have remained stompy the next day too, but it was still even hot by my standards, so I decided to hide in my cave instead, only coming out to eat, drink, and splash about in the water a bit to cool off.
~
I’ve forgiven her now though. After all, she’s the provider of tasty
nibbles – she always makes sure I have lettuce or other fresh veggies to go
with my pellets in the morning, as well as some herbs, and some days she lets
me have fruit too - and it does feel nice when she strokes my shell. Though I could do without days when I get
forced to get up when I’ve dug in for a nap, and those bath things... I hate
baths! Hermann’s Tortoises are not water dwelling creatures, you know.
~
Oh, and for those who want to know: the vet said it was wonderful to see such a healthy tortoise, and I'm in perfect shape. He also told Mummy I'm a girl (which she had suspected was the case, so was pleased to have been right about). The vet said you can't always know for sure for the first few years, but usually by my age (almost a year old) there are signs if you know what to look for. So, I'm officially a girl, in case you're interested.
Also, I now weigh 120g (which is the perfect weight for my size). So have more than doubled my weight since I came to live with these humans in January, since I only weighed 50g back then.
~
Artemis the tortoise
