Noted

I was kicking butt all month socking away $50 here and $20 there from garage sale earnings, half.com sales, and birthday checks toward my goal of being $25,000 richer by the end of 2011.

Then, yesterday, my savings for this year went back into the red, when we discovered that a raccoon had mauled our smaller turtle, Jack.

Jack is a really friendly turtle who swims over to say hi, doesn’t bite, and can be hand fed. Unfortunately, our bigger turtle, The Skipper, bullies him constantly, which is why Jack was living in the stream instead of inside the koizebo and protected with everyone else. As a result of the bad turtle politics in the pond, poor Jack fell victim to the raccoons, who bit off one of his front and one of his back legs.

Judging by the wounds, this attack had happened a few weeks ago, but we hadn’t seen either turtle until yesterday (turtles hibernate in the winter), when we broke up a fight between him and The Skipper at the edge of the pond. That’s when we saw his terrible condition. So since, he wasn’t bleeding (still) and he’d survived the winter despite horrible injuries, we decided that we wouldn’t put Jack down unless the vet said we should for Turtle Quality Of Life reasons.

We rushed Jack to the Dog ER down the street where, luckily, there was a reptile expert on call.

Well, two leg amputations and $850 dollars later, the turtle is back home, convalescing in our laundry room for the next month until his stitches come out. He seems to be perfectly fine with his one front and one back leg (luckily they are on opposite sides of his body) and is grumpily scooting around his hospital terrarium and eating his favorite food–koi chow.

Can I just tell you, nothing makes your birthday special like a double amputation.

And now I can add “medicating turtles” to my list of specialty skills.

And, while it totally sucks to spend so much money on what is essentially a wild animal that happens to live in our yard, I’m just grateful that I had enough money saved that I could give the turtle another chance. Red Eared Sliders live to be 25 years old, so Jack could have another 20 years of living in the pond–this time in the safety of the koizebo–instead of the stream. It would have been horrible to have to put him down because I couldn’t afford to treat him.