Reptiles Galore

That is Termophilas. She is a red-footed tortoise and she is my mom's. My mom actually has 5 tortoises and 2 turtles (turtles are aquatic), so I thought I'd at least post a picture of one of them. This one is the first one she got, and she is also the most spoiled of the bunch. Termophilas has quite an attitude on her, although it might not look like it from her sweet, wrinkled face. She is always willing to fight for food, especially bananas and sometimes we have to separate her from the other ones for a few seconds until she calms down. None of us knew, until we started keeping tortoises, that they LOVE meat. Once a week we'll give them a little bit of chicken or lean meat and they go nuts. They eat and eat until there's no more and then they have so much energy they want to run (I use that word loosely) around the house. We usually let them walk a bit if they get too hyper after all that protein. Anyways, I just wanted to share one other inhabitant of our house.

Coral is finally out of her water and back to hiding under mulch. She must be getting ready to shed either tonight or tomorrow. Tybalt shed last night and he looks fabulous. I also noticed yesterday, when I was holding both Talulah and Tybalt in the same hand, how much fatter Talulah is. She is actually bigger than Tybalt. It's amazing that she, the reluctant feeder, has gotten so chunky. Now I need to get Tybalt back on the feeding schedule. He's the one giving me trouble now. Arghhh!

I started reading "The Sign of the Four" on Sunday. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am pretty much a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, so it came as no surprise that I had an urge to read one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. I'm pretty sure I've read this one before, but that has never stopped me from enjoying a book and I very much doubt I'll ever get bored of reading these stories. This short book is the second one Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson so he is still introducing the characters to us, which is great because I am relearning some things I'd forgotten about.
I will not even comment on the travesty of the recent movie with Robert Downey Junior, the whole thing is beyond appalling. If you've never read a Sherlock Holmes story and you've seen the movie, please pick one of the books up and you'll realize what a load of crap that film was. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself.