Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Leave No Stone Unturned...

...or in the case of a herp that is missing inside your home, no corner unsearched. Today, I realized one of my false map turtles was missing from it's tank. I'll be darned if I know how it escaped but the fact is that somehow it figured out how to do it. I looked all around the tank, behind everything on the same bench top that holds the aquarium, on the bottom shelf of the work bench, under the dryer, washer, shelves water heater and so forth in my basement's back room where the tank is kept. I could not find it. I even searched in the Homer buckets in which I keep odds and ends thinking maybe when it fell off of the bench top, it fell into one of them on the next shelf down. No luck. Then I searched the front room of the basement, under and around everything - no luck.

I considered that maybe the two other turtles in the tank ate it but there was no evidence of that. Then I had the thought that maybe it got onto the bottom shelf of the shelving unit in the back of my basement. Nope - not there either but what was that there, way back, in the most inaccessible corner of the shelves, just above the floor level and wedged in tight? It sure looked like a map turtle shell. Yep, that was it. It was about 3 inches off of floor level so could not be seen when I looked under the shelves and only came into view when I took almost everything off of the shelf. In fact, only about a 1 x 1 inch piece, at most, of its shell was visible even then because most of it was obscured by the shelf or the upright 2x4 frame of the shelving unit. I grabbed it and back into its tank it went. It seems no worse for the wear, I am happy of that. Now to figure out how it got out of the tank and then make sure it does not do it again.

All the best,
GB