Honestly, I don’t know what’s up with the turtle any more. Dr. Pepper hibernates half the year, then he suns himself for a few afternoons, and he’s gone again. He’s Mr. Mysterious.
Of all my charges, he’s the easiest to manage. He lives in a tank, there’s a lid over it, he’s stuck in there. There was only that one time after the raccoon invasion when he was discovered over there, a good five minute walk from his tank. Maybe ten feet away. That was weird.
Ye olde turtle tank
Lately, his tank sprang a leak. The Farm Manager stuck a feather in the hole, said some bad words, and walked away. One hole became two, and then a couple more opened up at the far side of the tank. It became a daily show, watching her cuss and then find some new wadding to stop up the holes. The show ended abruptly when a strange tank moved into a completely new location and our old tank friend was shuffled off to Buffalo.
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- Dr. Pepper himself
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- One of the leaks
So now Dr. Pepper has a nifty new tank, and when wigglers moved in, he subcontracted a goldfish friend to hoover them up. Then he requested a new pump. There hasn’t been this much excitement since we almost adopted Leonard the Koi. Leonard was a thirty year old koi who needed a new pond. Other than being a beloved pet, he wasn’t very special: no fancy lineage, unremarkable coloring, not even a sparkling personality, and certainly no tricks or fancy dance routines. The local koi people weren’t terribly interested. Dobby would have liked him, but as it turns out, Dobby is no longer with us and his swimming pool went to a nice family in Yakima. Anyway, the Farm manager pestered those poor koi folks until one of them relented and took Leonard in. I hope he is doing well and lives two hundred years.
It looked pretty nifty until the Farm Manager put his beloved mud in the bottom.
Dr. Pepper has been here for seven years. His favorite activity is sunbathing, and his pet peeve is Bev. She thinks that because she is a duck she ought to be allowed to swim in his tank. Maybe eat some turtle food, you know, share. That’s why there has to be a lid on the tank. When the Farm Manager isn’t looking, Bev stands on the edge and stares into the depths. So far, she’s too scared to jump in.
Slightly murkier, but vastly more appealing to Dr. Pepper
The old pump died, probably because the Farm Manager cussed at it so much. The new one is a little bigger, because the new tank is a little bigger. The whole idea of the pump is to suck the water through a filter and clean it up. The new pump is so busy pumping that it’s kind of like a jacuzzi tub, and the little old filter just laughs at the whirlpool. We all laugh when the Farm Manager picks up the pump to check it out and gets squirted in the face, again! She is kind of slow, but we can all use a good laugh.
Stacy's Funny Farm 