Jeff the Turtle

When we first got Jeff, he was about the size of a quarter. Now, over 2 years later, he has grown to be bigger than my hand and is a source of joy and entertainment for the whole family. He's fun to watch swim around, and he goes to the top of the tank and splashes with his "arms" when he wants food. He likes to sun himself on his litlte platform, and jumps down with a huge splash when we walk by and startle him. He also likes to go to the front of the tank and stare at us.

When Jeff was little, he got a couple of tank-mates...some goldfish. The goldfish were also small at the time and grew to be rather large. Jeff and the goldfish lived happily together. They would eat each other's food, swim around, and at times it seemed like Jeff was hugging them with his long arms. Sadly, both died recently due to old age. We have it a couple of weeks and went out to buy more, thinking Jeff might be lonely. The lady at the pet store steared us away from the bigger fish and suggested we get more gold fish. OK, so we got 4 and introducted them to Jeff.

We imagined Jeff was saying "hi there, welcome!" After we let them out of the bag, the fish swam around, explored, and Jeff seemed scared of them...swiming away. The fish spent much of their time checking out their own reflections on the side of the tank...all seemed fine....

Until we realized we only saw 3 fish in the tank a couple days later. Not a sign of fish #4. We though perhaps he died, as many goldfish do, due to being in a new environemnt. And Jeff, being efficient and helpful, "cleaned up" the mess. Then this morning, we noticed there were only 2 goldfish left in the tank. The two remaining goldfish were still staring at their own refelections. Suddenly, Jeff came up from behind and tried to take a bite of fish #1's back fin. Then they got a move on and swam away, only to be chased by Jeff all around the tank.

So, apparenlty, our sweet little Jeff has been eating his new friends. We immediately removed the remaining fish from the tank and will be returning them to the pet store. Clearly, he needs friends his own size who will not put up with being eaten.

None of this was shocking to E, who apparently has enough experience with large animals eating smaller ones to know this is the way things go in nature. Or at least at Seaworld, where fish are being devoured by Shamu and his family by the hand fulls.