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.

Snake vs Gecko

This morning I was sitting in the library whiling away some time when something caught my eye in the window.  I looked up and waited and then suddenly a gecko started to try to climb the glass.  It looked very funny as it couldn't get any traction, I assumed there was something tasty up higher and eventually the gecko ran up the outer windowsill and sat up there for a few minutes.

I laughed and watched it's antics.

Then all of a sudden something else caught my eye at the bottom of the window and I realised there was a snake and that was why the gecko was trying to get up the glass. The snake had the gecko in it's mouth and they fought and turned for some time.  The gecko escaped a few times, but the snake was a bit more flexible and was able to follow the gecko very quickly.

I didn't know at this point what snake it was, but I now know it was a bronze back which is nonvenomous.  It came in a tiny hole/gap from the outside window and got itself trapped between the inside and outside windows with a huge gecko in it's mouth.  No idea how it thought it would get out again if it ate the gecko as it's belly would never have fitted out the little hole again!

Anyway, human intervention followed much to my disappointment as I was enjoying the spectacle.  The outside window was opened and the snake took off like a robbers dog without it's gecko.  One of the women opened the inside window - much to my horror! - and the gecko was sent packing too.

I hope the gecko survives - although I suspect a a very sore head for a day or 2!
Annoyingly I only had my iPhone so my photos are very average.