Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Dang, blast and other nasty expletives...

I wrote a whole post the other day and it did it's usual 'save' every few minutes then something went wrong and the page disappeared and so did my just written blog…

So I said a few carefully chosen words and shut my computer down and went to bed.  Best thing to do in these situations.

I've bravely decided to try again,  although I have no idea what I was writing about last time.

I'm on turtle duty while the curator is away.  He has several turtle eggs incubating at different temperatures and my job is to check temperatures morning and evening, check for newly hatched turtles and ensure moisture and water levels are good.

We also have a few tortoise eggs as well and they don't need a lot of input, just the odd squirt of water to keep humidity up.

Today we released three turtle hatchlings into the gharial enclosure as these weren't ones from the temperature batches.  There are 2 more who will also be released in the coming days once they are deemed old and fit enough.

Dropping the hatchlings into the water...
Not quite quick enough as Robin the Gharial came
(very quickly and quietly) to see what was happening!
And the last one goes in
My big excitement today was the hatching of a Travencore tortoise.  I had checked the egg this morning and put it back in the cupboard where the temperature is constant.  This evening, I was thinking I didn't need to check it as it was fine earlier.  But I took it out anyway.  I looked in and saw the little thing had hatched!  So sweet, and still folded and crumpled from being in the egg.  I cannot believe how big the turtles and tortoises are when they come of the eggs - the egg never looks big enough!

So this little fellow is with us for a few days until his umbilical cord is healed and he is ready for the big world.

This gecko was all of about 2cm at most
I was cleaning around the office desk that I use most days and some of the papers and things haven't been moved for a very long time.  I shifted something and the tiniest of gecko's ran out of the pile so I caught it and had a good look at it.  It had little folds of skin on the back of it's neck so I assume it was not very old.  I took some photos then tried to place it near where it came from so it would hopefully find a safe place and some food.

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