Musings of an Internet Axolotl

So this afternoon, I dropped my daughter off at her dance class and decided to walk to the library. (I needed the exercise, and I had a 2-hour parking slot, so not a big deal.) It was raining a bit so, as people do in the rain, I was walking with my head lowered so that my hat brim would better protect my face. (Hat is similar to the one in the picture, but waterproof wool felt. Very warm & toasty.)

I saw something in the gutter that looked interesting. A turtle-shell ornament perhaps. So I bent down to take a look at it...

and it looked back at me.

It was, in fact, a juvenile red-eared slider.



I could not imagine what a little guy like that was doing loose on the street in Santa Cruz. They're not legal to sell when they're that small (4" is the legal minimum, though I noticed a couple of vendors advertising "quarter size baby turtles" when I was googling for an image. Grrrr...) and they're certainly not native to California. Plus, I found it in the middle of downtown, for all intents & purposes.

So, I picked it up and carried it with me to the library. Walking over to the reference desk, I asked if they had any books on turtle care. While one of the reference librarians was looking up turtle care, the other found me a disposable plastic container and put a little water in it from the water cooler (Santa Cruz tap water would not be turtle-friendly.) Once the turtle was contained, I went and washed my hands (salmonella, y'know?). Two books on home reptile care were located, while somehow every librarian on duty managed to make it back to the reference desk to inspect the visitor. One of them mentioned that she had a red-eared slider at home which she'd had for 42 years. Wow...

So, books in hand, packaged turtle in bag, I went back to pick up my daughter from dance class. Homeward we went.

I walked in carrying the bag and my wife said "What's in the bag?" I replied "That would be a complication..." and showed her. An immediate decision was made to repair to our local fish & reptile-based pet store, Trop-Aquarium. (The guy there knows my wife well - she has a big saltwater fish tank in her classroom.) He confirmed that they're non-native and shouldn't be out & about, and offered to keep it until we could find it a home. (We are not ready to commit to caring for a critter that has needs as described in the above website.) After saying we would like to check with a librarian who had expressed interest in taking it home, we said we'd probably take him up on that.

Back to the library... where the shifts had just changed. Librarian in question has gone home. We left a note explaining that we'd taken the turtle to Trop-Aquarium, and returned there.

Interesting afternoon...