After several days of nonstop rain (which we needed! Most of AL is in a serious drought!) it's finally a fair-weather afternoon, so I've been puttering around the property doing animal chores at my leisure rather than racing storm clouds. I am looking forward to my PTO at the start of June to work on some projects, one of them being to move our resident RES, Tapestry, into a 300g stock tank finally. Tapestry is very growth stunted from prior neglect, so a 100g stock tank has been an adequate home for him, but frankly I just want everyone in the larger tanks and spent accordingly last month. All we need to do now is mesh it so it is predator-proof, hence waiting until June even though the tank is purchased.
The turtle pictured is not Tapestry because he is incredibly shy, but rather Browning, who came to us about 8 years ago, along with a massive goldfish that we also still have (now housed with our other two resident goldfish, also in a 300g stock tank, incidentally). Both animals suffered from improper husbandry despite the owner loving them and refusing to leave a DV situation without first placing them, which you can see from the deformities of Browning's shell and the scarring on her leg. Improper husbandry is unfortunately the norm rather than the exception for slider turtles in the US pet trade, often due to misinformation and deceptive vendor marketing. If you search the turtle tag on this blog, we have many posts about turtle husbandry and prior rescue cases.