Zoomy and Swifty

I've been wanting to get some pets for Eli, of some sort or another, for a while now. Our tadpole rearing adventure towards the end of last year had postponed my plans a little, but by last weekend I'd run out of excuses and my enthusiasm was back, so Eli and I went off to our awesome local pet store. I'd primed Eli by telling him that we were going to get a couple of turles and he was very excited about it, although on the way there in the car he announced that "maybe we can get a couple of turtles and a dog!". I quickly defused that suggestion and we didn't even stop to look at the dogs when we arrived.

The pet store had lots of short neck turtles for us to choose from, and thankfully, we were able to pick two that look a little bit different (at least I think so). We also bought all of the other necessary bits and pieces to keep our new pets...I think getting a dog might have actually been cheaper!

Here's our new tank, all set up - the turtles are in there, but they're pretty small so you can't see them in this photo.



Once we had everything set up I asked Eli what he wanted to call our new pets. He said, calmly and confidently, "Sophie and Sally". Whilst they are perfectly fine names, I just didn't think they suited our turtles, so we discussed it some more and decided to name them a bit more descriptively, trying to capture their personalities. So, now we have a turtle called Zoomy (the lighter coloured one) who is a really fast swimmer and generally a bit more active, and one called Swifty (the darker coloured one), who swims more gracefully but is generally quite timid. In the photo below of Eli holding our new family members, Zoomy is the one with his legs out, while Swifty is tucked up into his shell.



Here are some photos of our new pets becoming familiar with their new home.




Feeding times are already really good fun to watch and I'm keen to try some feeder crayfish or feeder fish sometime soon - just to make these little guys work for their meals a little bit more!