Monday, December 27, 2010

Our New Tarantula...Sort of...

This is the only picture that any of us took on Christmas.  All of the beautiful presents, the sparkling tree, the lovely decorations, the huge smiles lighting up our kids' faces on Christmas morning, and the only evidence I have to show for any of it is this one very random picture of a tortoise.  Trinity took this photo with her Nintendo DS (yeah, I didn't know those things could take pictures either).  This is "Shelly," Trin's absolute favorite Christmas gift.  She was supposed to get a pet tarantula for Christmas (she's been begging for one for over a year now), but every single pet store in the desert had sold out of them.  Who knew that big hairy spiders were such a popular yuletide commodity?  The problem is we had already bought everything for her new tarantula weeks prior, so here we were with probably over $100 worth of glass tank, rocks, plants, heating lamp, etc., but no spider.  In our desperation to come up with something to put in that glass tank, we somehow wound up bringing home a Russian desert tortoise. 

Shelly came with a 15 day exchange, so after Trin opened up her gift and finished shrieking with delight, we told her that we could take the tortoise back to the pet store if she wanted and exchange her for a tarantula once new shipments arrived.  The reply we got back was basically the ten year old equivalent to a hell no.  So we had to go back to the pet store, buy a bigger tank, exchange the little tarantula cave for a bigger log, and get more supplies. 

Trinity just adores her new pet, and has been obsessing over her for the last 48 hours.  Shelly is only a toddler and has a life expectancy of about 75 years, so it's good to know that once the thrill wears off, we only have 74 years, 11 months and 22 days left to care for a tortoise.  Trin says she can't wait to introduce Shelly to her great-grandchildren. 

I was going to write a real entry about Christmas, but I spent too much time talking about our stupid tortoise, so I'll attempt a better post tomorrow.  Until then, here is my sis's entry about Christmas.  Just substitute her family stuff with my own, and it's close enough.

2 comments:

  1. Hahaha! I didn't know the whole story surrounding the new tortoise, but that is hilarious! I just figured you had decided that based on you excellent track record with pets (insert sarcasm here), you would go ahead and by another one...
    And hey, no cheating! Write your OWN entry about Christmas!

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  2. Okay, I wrote my own very long rambling Christmas entry...happy?

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