Our Big Turtle Problem

No, the turtle isn't big; the problem is, for Mr. Turtle at least. Mr. Turtle, our semi-beloved semi-pet, has gone missing, but in a confined geographic rectangular region, The Garage.

We have been training our dog Cooper to leave Mr. Turtle alone. Trying. "Mr. Turtle is our friend" I know, it sounds dorky, but hey, it's me, the scientist, doing an experiment in animal behavior. Now it sounds cooler? Cooper doesn't seem to try to hurt him, just thinks maybe he is another squeak toy that doesn't work and carries him around like Kiboko and Elefante (our squeak toys have proper names, one from Kiswahili, the other French) You can see pictures of them in the blog "Froggie - The Forbidden Meat in the Garden of E-rnest-den" from a few months ago. "Yes, Froggie is our friend too." Yes, I agree, speaking that phrase to a dog does sound dorky.

It seems that Cooper had "transported" him into the garage and Wifey made him put him down. (I bet you didn't have problems with that last triple "him" sentence, did you?) When Wifey came back outside, the turtle had moved somewhere else. Unseen. The only problem though, the turtle is about "yay" high, and the concrete barrier at the bottom of the human back door is about 2 ½ "yays". I've seen Mr. Turtle in non-action. I don't think he's part Ninja, can pole vault or high jump, or for that matter, vault or jump in any non-Ninja manner, so at the moment he is trapped. Under things. A lot of things. Does this mean that someone is going to have to start moving (i.e. cleaning) the garage just to find & save Mr. Turtle? Okay, "clean" is too strong of a word, lets say, "rearrange".

Wifey asked me, "Is he going to starve?", to which I replied confidently (guessing) that turtles have a low metabolic rate and that they probably eat bugs, so "no". Winter is coming on soon so his only hope is the kindness of semi-strangers. After all he did come with the new house, we didn't ask for him. Judging by the number of scratch marks on his shell from being "transported" by Cooper, he has faired pretty well, knowing Cooper's past ferocity with other critters who are not his "friends".

So maybe Mr. Turtle will get lucky and while he happens to be out in the open in the garage sometime, a designated doggie delivery device will transport him back out into the semi-wild green yonder where he can wander back to his home underneath the utility building, recently renamed The Ninja Nook. And I won't have to "clean" the garage.