Turtle Trouble

As you can read in Daniels' post we have turtle trouble. You never realize how big a 1500 sq ft house is until you try to find a 6" turtle in it, or how it may look clean but underneath stoves, furniture, etc it's really not clean! I do not understand how this turtle got out, seriously the cage it's in is taller than he is and the opening he got out of is in the middle of the cage. He is one talented turtle. Well as Dan said we searched last night, I mean we searched and searched: upstairs, downstairs, in the crawl space, in with the water softner, water heater, furnace, under everything. We had flashlights, we even employed the services of our dog to try and find this turtle, but since she hadn't seen or smelled the turtle she couldn't get the scent to find it (she did find the celery in the fridge though) We finally gave up and hoped it wouldn't die in a few days and we'd be trying to find it by smell. Hopefully it would come out during the night and be waiting happily for us in the morning....Not the case. we wake up and first thing I do is call Daniel at work and ask "Any turtle news?" nope ok I guess the kids and I will keep up the search. The kids were very upset last night they ssooooo wanted a turtle and I figured okay because obviously it's survived outside in Utah so it's survived the weather, foxes, cats, dogs and the like so it should be able to survive at the Tate household. Well the kids go outside to scooter (their most favorite past time) and I sit and read the paper while McKinley sleeps (she's not feeling well...fever, runny nose...swine flu...NO probably teething) so anyway she's kind of fussing because the door is open so I start to take her upstairs to her bed, as I am walking up the stairs I glance downstairs and in the middle of the room there is a snake! no there is this thing that looks like a rock and I just had the kids clean up so it has to be the turtle...so I quickly dump McKinley into her bed and quietly run downstairs and as I get onto that floor the legs and head shoot back inside its shell and woo-hoo I caught the turtle. Yeah!! No dead turtle stink. The kids will be thrilled and now we have a name for the turtle....Houdini.

Yes in the second pic there is something on top of the cage so he won't escape again...also we will put him in a bigger aquarium..once we clean the aquarium out and make him a good home there.