Charlie is the Man!

In the last few weeks, Charlie’s tail has grown quite a lot, confirming my original suspicion (or rather feeling) that he is a boy. He looks a little bit funny now that the tail is as big as his paws and has become the first thing you see when you look at him. No significant growth is evident in his front nails yet but I’m expecting them to start growing soon. I’m guessing that the big tail is the first sign of manhood.

Charlotte was a bad turtle a few days ago. While on a walk around my room, she went underneath my office chair and started scratching her shell against the chair. It is a usual recurrence except that this time the scratching went on for about 15 minutes. I finally stopped her and saw that there were a lot of broken scutes under my chair and that her carapace was bleeding in two small places. Since she’s in the process of shedding, she scratches her shell quite a lot, even in her tank, but she’s never done it this roughly before. I immediately put her in a potassium permanganate solution to disinfect the wound and dry-docked her for a few hours under a heat lamp. I didn’t want to risk an infection by putting her directly back in her tank. The good news is that she’s fine now and both wounds are healed. Hopefully this will be a lesson for her.