doom revealed

The little bird was right. My owners whisked me off to the Vet's on Sunday morning. After what seemed like eternity, the vet came. She is actually a nice and warm young lady but when she is the master of your fate, you can't help but want to escape from her clutches. Anyway, she held me up and looked at me this way and that. I tried to smile at her and use turtle language to tell her that I'm really ok, stop making a big fuss over me. But alas, for all her intelligence, she couldn't receive my message...
After a while, she took me away from my owners to remove the stitches in my intestines. That was another painful and terrifying experience that no words can describe, so I will leave it at that.
After what seemed like second eternity, I was brought back to my owners. I never felt happier to see them. My female owner, obviously having more maternal or rather, turternal instinct, asked about my health status. The vet, in her sweet and kind voice, instructed my female owner to put me in warm water and sunlight to increase my metabolism as I was constipated and needed to produce more you-know-what. My female owner, being her usual self, replied, "Yah, Nooki is the laziest at home". Can somebody tell me what's the link??

impending doom

a little bird told me that my owners will be bringing me to the vet again! Although I look steady outside (my male owner calls me "an armour tank"), I'm actually shaking inside. What are they going to do to me this time? For the past two weeks, my home has been reduced to a 80% opaque plastic container. I can't really see what's on the outside, although I know that my siblings are walking around and having the time of their lives, while I am cooped up in this container. My owners call it quarantine. I call it torture.

the week after

well.. it has been a week since I was dragged to the vet to check on my prolapse. This week had been a tiring week as I had to fight against my owners' trickeries. You see, I had to take oral medicine because of the minor surgery. However, which human, much less a terrapin, likes to be on dope? First, they held me high up in the sky, with my face looking down. One of them tried to get me to open my mouth by probing my mouth with a needle syringe. Their objective was to forcefeed me with food. They tried for a good 15 mins before releasing me into my tank. Nooki-1, Owners-0.

After they released me, I decided to "give face". So when they tried to entice me with some food on a spoon, I obliged immediately. Nooki-1, Owners-1 Afterall, a hand-fed terrapin is quite unheard of in the reptile world!

That's when they pushed their luck. They tried to dope my food with some disgusting smelling medicine (I later learnt the medicine were steriods and anti-biotics). Aint no way am I going to oblige this time! So there they were trying to coax me to fall for their trick and there I was, getting more and more agitated by the minute. My tank was very small and I had problems trying to evade their advances. Finally they gave up. Nooki-2, Owners-1. The same cycle continued every night and the final scoreline was Nooki-7, Owners-1.

the sodomy

Many people are not aware but turtles defecate through a hole in their tails. My body size had always been a source of concern for my female owner (tell you more about her next time). She always grumbled that I am too fat and round, that my internal organs (like kidneys, liver, heart etc) are squashed together inside my compact shell. Last Sunday, her greatest fear for me came true - my intestines came out from my tail (see the red sacs in the picture below)

It was a horrifying and agonising week for me as my intestines remained outside my body. I felt really uncomfortable and I couldn't bring myself to eat anything. My female owner, having found out that my condition was a prolapse, adopted a wait and see attitude. When she finally "wait and see" no progress, she brought me to the vet the following Sunday.

The vet performed some excruciating procedure on me (I was conscious throughout ok!) and managed to stuff everything back inside me again. She ordered my female owner to bring me back to see her in three days' time and my female owner meekly obeyed today. Bad move. The vet, I still believe in the goodness of her heart despite what happened, applied some cream onto a syringe and thrusted the syringe INTO my anus. In and out, in and out. My lungs were screaming out in pain and my eyes would have popped out if they could. What on earth was she trying to achieve with that act?? Finally, the vet was done with her exploits and I was put back into the water. Naturally, I sulked the whole day. I still am. Leave me alone.

my cute and happy wriggle

As with most red-eared terrapins, I was adopted from a pet-shop. One good Sunday four years ago, I was lazing in the common miniature tank with my fellow terrapin mates (similar to the Chinese junks where the forefathers of Singapore travelled in to get to Nanyang, it was cramp, smelly and food was hard to come by) when suddenly, I saw the face of a guy peering into the tank.
My ancestors used to have this word of advice for us - when someone looks into the tank, it's time to spring into action and start moving around. Best is if you can move towards the person. It's something like a mating call, only now, it's to entice someone to adopt you. So I mustered up all my energy to swim towards that guy's hand (remember that I wasn't well fed!) and as what my ancestors forewarned, he took hold of me and inspected me.
I gave him the cutest and happiest wriggle of my life. Lo and behold, he fell for the trick and chose to adopt me! Of course, he chose my sister Nanook as well. He probably thought that it would be better for me to have company but really, terrapins are solitary creatures. We are happy being left alone to bask in the sun or in my case, meditate in a dark corner.
At this point, you must be wondering whether my brothers played the same trick. Well, it's another long story.. to be told another time.

my family

This is my family. As you know by now, I'm the yellow coloured terrapin on the bottom right hand corner. Next to me on my left is my sister, Nanook. Believe me, we are born at around the same time. No thanks to her gigantic appetite, I am the size I am today. On top of her is my elder brother, Dodo. Yes, I said elder. He's six years old - two years older than us. Next to Dodo and on top of me is my other elder brother, Dona. YES, he is also six years old. I have absolutely no idea why they are so puny in size. Many people can't believe that we (the gals) are so much bigger than them. But it's usually the case in the animal kingdom where the females are larger in size. I'm not sure what we are doing in this photo. Think it was just another lazy afternoon, where our owner (the female one, we have two, the other is a male, but more on them another day) had nothing better to do than to line us up for a photograph.

I am who I am

This is me, the big gal. My name? Nooki. Life on planet earth? 4 years and still counting. Human being calls me many things - turtle, terrapin, wugui, tortoise, guigui, shangui. But really, I am a red-eared slider, or to the learned, I am a Trachemys Scripta Elegans. The many who have seen me describe me in many terms - cute, big, fat, yellow, scary, slow... with such "accolades", you can expect me to suffer from low self-esteem. but nay, i turn a deaf ear to all these comments. I am who I am. Who cares how the world sees me?