EPTAs I have mentioned in previous blogs, I own two red eared sliders, Lux and Vex. Unfortunately, Vex recently passed away, so I just have Lux.
I had a feeling Vex wasn't doing too well, he always was sluggish and seemed disinterested in his food. Lux bullied him constantly, too, and I had to feed them in separate containers to prevent her from eating all of the food. The stress from the 1,200 mile drive got to him a few days after I got home and he passed on.
I wasn't sure he was truly dead when he stopped moving, so I placed him on the basking rock in their tank. I came back to find him floating in the water a little while later and was hopeful that he was still alive. Thus, again, I moved him back to the rock and, again, came back to find him in the water. However, after the third time I placed him on the rock, I realized the reason his body kept ending up in the water: Lux was trying to eat him. As the third time I checked up on him, I found Lux being the evil bitch of a turtle she is, chewing the the foot of his corpse. *SIGHHH*
Lux has also been much more aggressive since I got a larger tank for them, probably because I don't handle her as much. Whenever I picked her up, she would go in to her "I'M GONNA BITE YOU" mode, which, for turtles, it basically opening her mouth. I forced her to socialize with me by sitting on my stomach while I played Fable 3 yesterday and she eventually chilled out enough to not mind being handled by me again.
Today, however, a very interesting feat happened. Lux has a voracious appetite, hence why she would generally try to eat all of the food in the tank. I fed her the usual two pellets of food today, which she only ate one and a half of in an hour, so I placed her back in her tank. My dad, however, found an earthworm this afternoon while gardening and offered it to me as a treat for her. While I had been tempted to feed her food other than pellets before, I had only given her greens and carrot shavings before.
I initially placed the worm in her tank, until I recalled how messy eaters turtles are and that I just cleaned her tank yesterday. The worm squiggled around on the basking rock for a bit, dipping into the water, trying to find more ground. Lux saw it and poked at it, which caused the worm to fall into the bottom of the tank. Thus, fishing it out took a little while and I was afraid it had drowned (I assume live food is more appetitizing). I put both the worm and Lux in the feeding container, which is quite small, and watched Lux blunder around the sides for a few minutes, completely ignoring the worm. I started back up my Fable 3 game, played for a few minutes and checked again to find Lux still ignoring the worm.
After finishing a few more quests, I got up and checked the container to find Lux huddled up in a corner napping and NO SIGN of the worm. She ate the damn thing whole! Lux is barely 3 inches long and the worm was about 4-5 inches, so it was the size of her head and legs combined and she ATE IT WHOLE!
God... Lux is such a fatty... I'm actually concerned she's going to explode from eating so much...
Here's hoping I don't lose another turtle!
