Frankie WIshes

Every night Frankie dreams about going outside, walking in the leaves, grazing on green grass, and watching the yard friends playing around. Such pleasant dreams for Frankie and he wakes with such anticipation. What a disappointment to find day after day of cold, cloudy weather that even a big sulcata like him can't tolerate to get outside.

This has been the sad story of Frankie for the last few days. Waking with great anticipation, waiting for me to open the door, peeking out, big cold draft smacking him right in the face and a quick "about-face" turn around back inside the house. At least he gets his daily carrots. And I have three big pumpkins I collected from October that should last until January. Oh, and his friend, Farmer, sent him a acorn squash direct from his own garden that Frankie has nibbled on for the last couple of days. This are favorite foods so what more can a sulcata wish for? So indoors isn't all that bad.

Greg has finished Frankie's outdoor house so today (cold or not) Frankie gets to go outside and try out his new digs. We will put in a Hobovator Temperature Recorder to see what happen overnight when temperatures really drop.

Why I like cars

thought I would be ambitious today and take Frankie for a walk to his favorite park.....and not in a car. I really didn't think it would be a big deal. Good exercise for me. Lots of walking for him. I brought his cart and skateboard just in case. I estimated two hours. Yea, right.

Going around our block takes Frankie and I an hour. When I walk by myself it takes 15 minutes. Big difference. I estimated the walk to the park was going to take us just over an hour. So to and from park, 2 hours plus a few more minutes. Back in time for lunch.

Frankie walked most all the way until we got to a street with lots of traffic. On to his cart he went strapped down so he could not jump off (Really I it's a turtle suicide jump because the tortoise/turtle can see its a big fall and no way to they have springy knees to soften the fall). So I was careful and strapped him down. He managed to get out of the straps twice. But we finally made it to the park. He grazed for what I thought was about twenty minutes. Then it was time to go back.

On the trip back I tired. I tried to avoid the busy street and took a back road that probably added an extra 30 minutes. That final walk up our street was plain awful. I was hungry. My legs hurt. Frankie was tired. No way was I going to put him on the cart. So we trudged that final 100 feet.

When I finally got him into the back yard and checked the time FOUR HOURS expired from the time we left the house until we got back.

Will I ever take him to the park again? Sure, in my car!

Foam Home

Greg made a bit of progress on Frankie's enclosure over the weekend. He added foam to the inside top of the enclosure. A good friend of Frankie (Farmer) is providing some Prodex leftover from his house (human) house construction. Greg pulled up all the cement pavers that Frankie's enclosure was sitting on so he can re-level the area and better protect it from rain run off.

I keep thinking that Greg is doing all these marvelous upgrades and Frankie is probably going to outgrow the enclosure in a couple of years. I guess we could sell the thing to someone!

It is warm enough today that I thought it may be nice for the box turtles to spend some time outside.

Good news: Frankie's spider friend has made it through the cold snap.
Bad news: I found my yard chipmunk dead over the weekend. I am feeling really hostile toward neighbor cats. Those cats better stay clear of my yard because I am getting very accurate with a rock.