Inside Outside

 Frankie has been indoors almost every day since Christmas.  He is not happy with me. 

"I hate you, mom."

His indoor space isn't very big so he is very annoyed.

 

"Something in this gecko room is coming down.  Plastic barrier is not going to keep me from ramming garbage can or the humidifier."

It's all I can do to keep him occupied and amused.

 "Hello, Steel Stella.  I've missed you."

 Newt joins Frankie at each meal and Frankie doesn't mind sharing at all.

 Playing footsies under the door with Frankie is going to get that cat in a whirl of hurt.

 Frankie gets my constant attention....including 10:00 pm for bedtime check. 

 "Get outta my way! It's sunny and I am going outside."

Poor Frankie turned into an unmoving shell sculpture outside in his backyard. He was so cold I had to get help to carry him back inside. Frankie refused to move for thirty minutes.  Sorry Frankie.  Sunny and 40ºF is too cold for tortoises. 

We'll try to get outside again in March.  Just sit here and warm up.   

So this is Christmas

It's early Christmas eve and Greg and I doing what we usually do for the Christmas Holidays....avoiding the Christmas Holidays.

It's not that we are Bah-humbug, but Christmas is the longest holiday we have to endure.  It starts well before Thanksgiving when the first tv commercial features the sounds of Christmas bells or an outright Christmas song. The array of things to do for Christmas for the next 45 days is so vast no one family can do it all. We pick and choose what we do but the rest still comes at me like bad celebrity news. It is exhausting.

Our plan for the next two days is to watch commercial free TV, stay outta the stores, make home-made pizza (both days), relax and pretend it is January.

The only other thing to be done is take care of Frankie, the cat, and the geckos.

It's getting cold tonight so Frankie is inside in the big bathroom.  I was prepared.  Room cleaned, rags and newspaper available, cardboard palace set up.  I went out and picked Frankie some grass.  I mixed it with some lettuce, vitamins, and calcium.  I brought Frankie his Christmas Eve din-din.

Frankie sat, rear blocking the the door, munching on his feast.  He was happy.  And then he peed.

I've said this before, it is absolutely astonishing how much pee can come out of the back end of a 100 pound sulcata.  I can hear it from the gecko room.  I arrive in time to grab rags and inspect the damage.

One can never have enough rags with a 100 pound sulcata.

Now this has never happen before:  Frankie's pee went under the door and into the hall where there is a rug.

I start throwing rags at the door to sop up as much pee as possible.  It was too late.  Although I could not open the door (Frankie is blocking), I can peek out enough to see that the rug just outside the bathroom door is getting soaked.  I squeeze through to door.

"GREG!"

"What?"

"Can you bring me the rug cleaner spray, NOW?"

You see, as much as sulcata poop seems to bother people, there really isn't anything, including sulcata poo that smells as bad as sulcata pee....in 24 hours.  Getting the sulcata pee out of the rug is a Holiday emergency!

I sop up what pee I can from the rug.  I start spritzing the rug with rug cleaner.  Then I just open the rug spray container and pour it where the pee is.  Rub, rub, rub, pat, pat, pat, pray, pray, pray.

I finish all the rug cleaner and go through a dozen rags.  I squeeze back into the bathroom, pushing Frankie butt away from the door.  Good timing.  Frankie just finished up another round of pee.

At this point I am ready to have Frankie move so I can get under him but he refused. 

"Greg!"

"What?"

"Can you bring me a carrot.  Frankie will not move."

I've been criticized for feeding Frankie carrots.  They are not appropriate sulcata food.  Carrots are a tool.  I make sure Frankie gets them as a reward and a bribe.  In instances of Frankie refusing to move, carrots come in real handy.  

Frankie still made me wait for a while before he got up and moved off his pee.  But he did move.  Thank you carrot.

I cleaned up the last of the pee.  Put all the pee soaked rags in the washer machine (there were a lot of wet rags).  Opened the bathroom window.

Now if that rug starts stinking, and it may, I will be forced to do something I did only once in 1982:  go to a store the day after Christmas to rent a rug cleaner.

In 1982, I promised myself I would never, ever, ever again go to the Day After Christmas Sale.  Sulcata pee:  What a way to spoil a perfectly quiet Christmas.

Best wishes for the new year.

Fall to Winter Frankie

It's that time of the year again when I loose all sense and intelligence and start thinking of bringing Frankie indoors.  Yes, the South is headed to the plummeting cold of 30º F or what I think are shell shattering temperatures.

Actually my insanity began the first time it got to 40º F.   I dragged the electric oil heater out of storage, brushed off all the cobwebs, got on the internet to read instructions on how to set the 24 hour timer, searched for a decent extension cord and then placed it in Frankie's enclosure outside his inner cave where the heat will never get to him but it fights off the cold coming in from outside. 

It happens every fall.  I think I can't keep Frankie warm enough outside without doubling my electric bill.

Huge electric bills are nothing new to reptile keepers.  Electric bills are huge even in the summer but when winter rolls around, watch out.  We start turning off lights and computers because every spare cent is going to the geckos and the outside Frankie who are going to enjoy balmy tropical temperatures while the humans bundle up to keep warm inside the house.

Which is how I came up with the idea of shared heat.  Why should Frankie sit outside in an enclosure warm enough to grow orchids all winter long when Frankie could come inside and sleep with the geckos and keep them warm with his heat pad and electric oil heater?

It's genius....expect for one thing.

First is the set of rules for Frankie indoors:  1) Don't eat anything fabric and that includes rugs and couches and clothes, 2) Walk in the middle and don't scrape your shell on all the walls, 3) No rearranging furniture,  4) Poop and pee on the newspapers, 5) No ramming indoors.....

Then I tear all that up because Frankie can't read English and he does what he wants to do even if the table has several glasses full of juice sitting on it. 

But still, here I am clearing out the large bathroom (the gecko's bathroom) and setting up a place for Frankie to sleep.  He is assigned there because the bathroom has a water proof floor.  I don't know if Frankie can take out a ceramic toilet: just hoping he doesn't.

Frankie in the fall is much different that summer Frankie.  For the last two weeks Frankie woke up around 10:00 am, finely emerging from his cave about 11:00 am, and goes to bed around 2:00 pm.  He poops only one or two small poops.  Frankie drinks water but only small amounts and won't go into his kiddy pool full of water even after I threw a dozen carrots in there....he waited on the edge of the pool while I fetch the carrots outta the water.

Shared heat aside, the biggest reason I bring Frankie inside during fall and winter is I miss him.  Even after what follows bringing Frankie indoors.

Frankie's first day inside? Bumper car journey from the back door to the gecko bathroom including near disaster with a coffee table leg getting tangled up with Frankie's front foot, a bamboo basket getting taste tested, a new shell scraps along bathroom wall, rams the garbage can, rams the humidifier......pretty much as expected.

Then I am reminded why I keep two boxes of rags and old towels in the gecko room.  I will never get used to the Niagara Falls worth of instant sulcata pee followed up with a pond worth more pee only this time filled with urates.  Frankie had to saved all his pee from all summer.  There is no explanation for that much pee coming out of one tortoise.

Complain all you will about sulcata poo.  I think it's nothing: nothing next to the overwhelming stench of sulcata pee. Hint:  pick that stuff up fast.  Sulcata pee gets exponentially smellier by the minute.  Towels and rags have to be washed instantly or the stench will drive you out of your house.

Bring fresh grass, please when you're done mopping up the pee

 Tell me again that there are people who raise their sulcata indoors?

I hear it's going to warm up again later this week.  Please say it's true.