Me? I’m no more busy than usual (which isn’t trivial, but…). My pets, on the other hand, have been doing all sorts of things this week.

My turtle Sand Dollar has been laying eggs. Sand Dollar is fifteen years old, and has been with us for over ten years. She’s a Red-eared Slider, which typically start laying eggs once they’re about five inches long (shell). She was that big around eight years ago and has been nine inches long for years, but I’ve never seen eggs until this week.

She has exhibited egg-laying behavior plenty of times–basking a lot, digging with her hind legs, and acting like she’s trying to get out of the basking enclosure on top of her tank. I’ve put her in a nest box and taken her outside. I took my laptop and worked on our front porch a couple weeks ago, and Sand Dollar acted like she was laying, but four hours later, no eggs. I guess they could’ve fallen down the snake hole she was sitting over, who knows!

So the other day I was sitting at my desk doing day job work, and glanced over to see Sand Dollar nibbling at something that looked like a small, white hot dog in the bottom of her tank. An egg! Or more like two or three fused together, for it was three inches long! She had dropped four more this morning, this time normal size (slightly larger than robins’ eggs). Oh, and if anyone’s curious, I discarded them, as they wouldn’t be viable even if she hadn’t laid them in water, because Sand Dollar is a single girl.