tough tongue

My female owner's mother has a tough tongue but a very soft heart. She examplifies "her bark is worse than her bite". Having worked all her life in a psychiatric hospital, taking care of patients with schizophrenia and the like, it's easy to understand why she needs to have a tough tongue.

My female owner often joked that her mother brought her up, treating her like one of her patients. Oh, the rod was never spared. In fact, there were more than one lying around the house. Hmm.. somehow that translate into how my female owner tries to discipline us turtles. Whenever we do something wrong (yes, we make mistakes as pets too... usually it's about pooing or peeing indiscriminately around the house), my female owner would rap our shells to let us know we did something wrong. Sometimes, she may hit us on our heads too, causing us to retract our heads in shock. But we never change our behaviour. Wahaha. It's turtles' rights to poo and pee anywhere.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that, although my female owner's mother had been telling her not to come back in July, the moment my female owner confirmed that she would be coming back, her mother immediately swung into action to check out airfares for her. Apparently she did not want to pressurise my female owner to come back, in case my female owner could not complete her work over in Brisbane. That's why she told my female owner not to come back (but secretly hoped otherwise?)