No pictures, sorry, he’s shy. But I rescued the World’s Smartest Turtle from certain death earlier today. Or yesterday, I guess, same thing. When I woke up and walked past the pond there was no water squizzling out of the squirter and I was all, DANG IT! because I’d just cleaned the filter and it had been pumping really well just the day before. So I yoinked the intake tube out of the water, and lo and behold, there’s Turdy suctioned to it by his shell.
AGH!
Poor little bugger, who knows how long he’d been stuck under water. So I shook him off and he floated up to the surface of the water and was so still I thought he was dead. But he wasn’t-he was gasping. Seriously, I had tears in my eyes, it was scary and sad and he was so pathetic, floating and huffing for about 3 minutes. Then he sunk down and sat on a ledge for another minute, contemplating, I’m sure, what had just happened to him. Then he went back to being his usual super genius self and scrambled for safety under a rock.
And I haven’t seen him since. And now I’ve decided that while we call him Turdy day to day, that’s just his nickname. Following the Bev Hills naming scheme (the fish are Brenda Walsh, Kelly Taylor and Donna Martin), I’m renaming him Steve Saunders. Hahaaa!
You are a hero!!! I am glad you rescued Steve!!!
Okay made me get teary eyed.
Aw. Poor little guy. I hope he’s not traumatized. :( Good thing you woke up when you did.
Oh NO! can you put something on the end of the intake pipe to prevent that from happening again?
Terrible, and it’s happened before with Kelly’s orange mate that got sucked up the intake. I was advised to use an old pair of my pantyhose (HAHA!) and put that over the end but I didn’t and Kelly grew bigger and there hadn’t been any mishaps and who would ever, in a million years, thought that this could happen to a turtle?
I moved the input, fyi, it’s right above a rock so nothing can get between it and the sucking. Sigh.
You MUST put a screen or something over the end of that pipe! Not only will you protect your aquatic friends, but you will prevent anything from being sucked up and damaging the pumping equipment.
I have used window screening and 1/4 inch wire mesh for such things. I make the end into a ball (like a microphone screen) and put it over the end of the tube positioning it so that the end of the tube is suspended midway into the ball. If you make it removable, it makes it easy to clean.