Pantalones & Chewbacca, the turtles

The turtles were the second & third additions to our growing family. Pantalones is the larger turtle and Chewbacca is the smaller one. I was at "99 Ranch Market" which is a local Asian grocery store. They have a cute little shop inside the store that sells Hello Kitty and other fun stuff. I was buying a Hello Kitty day planner when I saw cute little turtles at the checkout. They were $13.99 and came in a little shoebox sized plastic tank. So without asking Trevor or anything like that I impulsively purchased a pair of turtles!!! The lady said that all they would ever need was that little tank and food she gave me. Oh boy was that wrong. When we got them they were the size of a silver dollar! Now they are definitely larger than my hand! We bought a 10 gallon glass aquarium and a heater, filter, and they need a special UV light or their shells don't harden properly! Well over $100 later we had a pretty cute set-up! Well they kept growing!!! So we bought a bigger tank, a bigger filter, and spent more money! Well much to my suprise they still are growing (Pantalones is some freak of nature, yes the nice lady at the Hello Kitty store was wrong to say they would not grow, but even after talking to several pet store owners they all say Pantalones should not be as large as he is. He is the same size as turtles that are 4-6 years and he is one year old!). So then we decided it would be neat to have a pond with a waterfall in the backyard. So that is the current project we are working on! Wow, not as easy as they make it look on HGTV! We need to finish stacking some rocks around the waterfall and then the turtles will move in when the weather gets warmer!

Clay the Neighbor Bunny

The funny thing about Clay is that he does not actually belong to us! He lives next door and I guess he roams around in his backyard. Well he is pretty good at making it into our backyard somehow. This means he has been a pretty frequent visitor around our house. The first time I ever saw him I was sick at home from work. Imagine me in my PJ's at 2pm chasing a bunny around my yard. Well we did not know who he belonged to at that time so we made fliers to post around but luckily before we even hung them up our neighbor came around looking for him. One day I looked out and saw a bunny and thought, oh Clay is back again for a visit! Nope! This bunny looks almost exactly like Clay but he is a little bigger and his spots are slightly different. He is also much harder to catch, thus no photos! Well after awhile I gave up on catching them (they just get out again anyways), I figure if they can make it here they can make it home. I also noticed this had the added effect of they were eating all the weeds out of my yard! Yayy! Well lately they have turned their attention to my flower pots so suddenly I am less excited about our furry visitors.... Oh well, they are cute!

Bob the Beta Fish

Bob was the very first addition to our crew of pets! I got him from my very close friend Evelyn as a house-warming gift when we bought the house in Sept 2006. I have never gotten a living creature as a house-warming gift but he is the only purple beta either of us had ever seen (yes he looks blue in this photo but he is more purple in real life) and she knows how I feel about purple! I like Bob because he is a gentle Beta who is not angry all the time like some other fishes of his species!