Anyone Want a Turtle?

"So Kayla," you say, "what did you guys do for your anniversary?"

And I say:

Let's start with what we WERE going to do.

We WERE going to get off work early, drive up to Sedona, take some pictures as the sun went down, have a nice dinner, meander the artsy shops, take the "for sale" sign down at an old property that no one else at work has wanted to drive to, and then drive home. It would have been lovely. A lot of driving, but still a very nice evening for our anniversary. Especially since neither of us have ever actually been to Sedona before. We had high hopes for some beautiful photos and some quality time together.

Now, what did we ACTUALLY do?

We looked for the stupid turtle.

The first part of our plan went off quite well. We both left work early enough to make the drive and arrive in Sedona with plenty of time before the sun went down. Then Aaron got home before me and noticed that Senor Turtle was not where we left him, which is to say, in his tank, where he belongs.

We have had some problems with him escaping before, but we recently upgraded him from a 5 gallon tank to a 30 gallon tank and the water level was such that we were pretty sure he couldn't climb out using his turtle dock like he had previously. Plus, we thought he would be so happy with his huge tank (seriously, comparatively, he has more room than we do) and would have no need to escape. We were wrong.

We searched for the better part of an hour. An hour that we should have spent on the road.

We COULD have just left him, but I'm really afraid of him drying out and dying and then us finding him via the smell of his rotting corpse in a few weeks. I don't care if he dies, but please don't make me clean up a nasty decomposing mess.

The search was filled with a lot of me yelling at the turtle because I AM EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT AND YOU ARE MAKING ME GET DOWN ON THE GROUND TO LOOK FOR YOU, YOU STUPID TURTLE! AND YOU ARE RUINING MY ANNIVERSARY!!


After tearing our house apart for an hour, we found him behind the washing machine. He was asleep, from the looks of it. And by then it was too late to head off to Sedona.

Stupid turtle.