Saturday, August 18, 2007

Nemo Goes "Jogging"


Nemo had quite an active morning. Last night he decided to crawl under the blanket that his summer home sits on and somehow managed to actually crawl into the hide still under the blanket. Apparently he forgot he had done that when he woke up. I came downstairs at 6 am and he was not awake yet. Usually he is out and waiting for me. I decided to set up my camera anticipating he would have difficulty getting out.

While wriggling his way out of the blanket, he must have tapped into quite a storehouse of energy. He proceeded to circle the kitchen three times. He is about a 5" turtle and the room is about 10' long. Three laps. Think about it. Not only was he active, he was (as Brian would say) "Marco Nemo" exploring and being quite daring. He climbed to the roof of his summer home. I couldn't believe he did that while I had my camera running! I had missed how he had gotten up there the last time. After surviving the spill off the roof, he circled back to climb over his basking log and (for the first time that I saw) climbed over his large log hut landing nose first on the descend--once again seemingly impervious to falls and tumbles.

After his second circle to once again climb over the log hut, he took a bath in his wading pool before coming right at the camera as if to say "Would ya turn that thing off!" and took an abrupt turn to take a breather behind the igloo. Whew! That's more activity than I do in a whole day.

The photo to the right is part of Nemo's habitat. The far left is his blankie covered igloo complete with log "garage". In the forefront is his intersection paver rock. To the far right is his summer home. He is one little guy I enjoy having under foot.