Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Ames
Cool!
We have a red-eared slider about the same size I would guess. Got him when he was the size of a 50-cent piece nearly 20 years ago when son was young. They wanted to release him when son went away to college, but I vetoed that. He's kind of fun to have around, and I'm not sure he'd make it in the wild. And I wouldn't ever want to see a turtle in the road again--alive or dead--knowing that it might be JP.
Tommy was born in 2012 in The Bronx. He was the size of a quarter when the woman who bought him at a Dollar Store brought him home along with his sister. Her daughter was a little rough with him so she gave him to her best friend who I recently married. We took him to Canada in 2018 and a year or so later I picked up a wife for him from a Turtle rescue center just outside Toronto. They are both Yellow Bellied Sliders. In 2021 we moved them both to Florida and they are very happy living in their tub in the screened in porch getting weather they were meant to live in. Tina (Tommy's wife) has laid eggs a few times but nothing ever hatched. I think Tommy lived alone too long and I have never seen him actually mount her.
He has gotten a lot bigger in the last few years. In 2018 he fit in the palm of my hand. Now he easily covers my whole hand (and I'm pretty sure my hands are bigger than Trump's!)
I had a YouTube channel for awhile with over 2,000 subs but stopped updating a few years back. This was all during the pandemic so if you find it (I just looked back at some videos for the first time in a long long time and can't believe I was doing such stupid voices) keep in mind I was living alone (wife is American and got to move before me) in Northern Ontario and Canada had some of the stupidest and most restrictive rules in the world at the time. No longer active but you can still find [at]TommyMcTurtleson on YouTube. Check out "The McTurtlesons Cover The Turtles for @Nicole Foti" or "Tommy & Tina's Wedding" to see how far gone I went.