Bye Bye Joey

We lost another pet and it is really disappointing.   It’s been three days since we tried to revive our turtle Joey from what we were all frantic to believe was just a deep deep sleep.  But he didn’t wake up.  You might remember the telling of putting our hamster to sleep last year when he got sick with cancer and infection.  You might think that would be a tougher loss because it’s easier to imagine bonding, snuggling, and interacting with a big fat hamster than a hard shelled no hugs turtle, but you’d be wrong.

Of course the loss of our furry friend was tough, too. Watching him suffer was heart breaking. But Joey joined our family at just about the same time we adopted our kids and he helped us all to bond and get to know each other.  He’s been a part of our family for as long as we’ve been a family so it is just different for him to not be here.  I can tell the kids feel it too.

You don’t hug or necessarily communicate with a turtle like you do some other household pets but he did react to someone entering the room or hanging out at the aquarium watching him swim.  Turtles are very fun and relaxing to observe. Even just the sound of his tank and the constant motion of him swimming about kept a tranquil energy moving through the house.

We kept the turtles from school with us over the summer. We had them stay for shorter periods throughout the year and things were fine but summer vacation might have been too long.  It was the week before school when we noticed Joey was swimming funny. Kind of lopsided.  I didn’t notice the weight loss until I picked him up and his shell seemed deflated.  He couldn’t move his back legs.  We took him to Dr. R. our cousin/veterinarian extraordinaire and she said he was among other things, extremely malnourished.  We hadn’t noticed that the other turtles had been hoarding all the food.

For weeks we fed him supplements, antibiotics, and tried to help him build the strength back in his legs and it seemed for a couple of days he got a little fatter and more vibrant.  Then suddenly he stopped eating and declined rapidly.  I wouldn’t have thought him anywhere near his death bed Thursday night when I put him to bed, but Friday when I picked him up to put him on his basking rock he was limp and we couldn’t wake him up.

We get picked on a bit for our intense attention to our pocket pets, but I don’t get why they would deserve any less care than bigger, more traditional pets.  Do you?