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  1. It reminds me a bit of our early days with Sheldon. No prior pets, no experience with turtles, no one to ask about turtle care (except the Internet). Massive trial and error. He kept shedding scales and my daughter was hysterical (I think she was 7 at the time) trying to get us to take him to a vet. I’m like, sweetie, there ARE NO vets around here that take care of turtles.

    He was just growing.

    These days we’re so much more chill. We’ll leave him with a full feeder and go on vacation. I’ve got a security camera but when I was in New York I forgot to look in on him. He was fine.

    • Thankfully these days it’s easier to stay in touch with experts. But it’s costing them hundreds of dollars a week for the special food the babies need. They are now staying at the home of a friend who has more room and resources for the babies.

      • The last time Sheldon was acting weird I found a website with a veterinarian who would answer questions that you posted. Which was cool.

        What wasn’t cool was reading the archives. Lots of people asking for help with their turtles and being unwilling or unable to seek professional care, ending with “How do I tell if my turtle is dead?” The poor doctor kept desperately trying to persuade these people to go to a vet, only to be told they didn’t have any money or couldn’t drive an hour. Then she’d try to persuade them to talk to the vet and work out a payment arrangement, which they’d refuse. And then the outcome was inevitable. It … was not pleasant reading.

        • That sucks. Having any kind of pet is a big commitment and their health care is part of the responsibility. Sheldon has a good life. 🐢🙂. I’m glad this family stepped up and didn’t just flush the babies or something.

          • A lot of people think you can just stick turtles in a tank and ignore them. That’s not the case. I’ve invested hundreds of dollars in automated equipment to take care of Sheldon. It works really well, but there’s all kinds of nuances like “turtles absolutely require sun or a UV lamp and a place to dry off” that people who grab one from a pet store don’t bother to learn.

  3. Octopi or octopus?  They are amazing creatures that I don’t think belong on this planet.  They should probably be on Jupiter w/ their cousins Psychefunkapus…

    • They’re not just smart, but their intelligence is fundamentally different from vertebrates.

      We backboners operate with a pretty centralized system with a brain as the command center and a limited amount of autonomy in places like the spine.

      Cephalopods have much more distributed intelligence, so that their arms and skin are able to solve problems independently of the brain and each other. How it all works for a single organism is still hard for scientists to put together.

      • There are lots of sci-fi books that explore cephalopod style of intelligence/sentience. I just went down the rabbit hole and put some on my to read list.

        Binti, A Mountain in the Sea, Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2), Manifold Time. That last one might just be a small part featuring squids in space.

    • I completely agree with this. I don’t even eat crab anymore because there’s a pet rainbow crab on TikTok that signs for food, watches videos and is frightened by sharks, and cuddles with her kitty siblings after being taught not to pinch them! There’s so much we don’t understand about the animals we share our planet with.

  5. I went through a “What’s My Line” binge (every single episode ever broadcast is on Youtube and I watched Every. Single. One.) On one episode they had a pair of Italian brothers. This was circa 1955. Remember, the panelists only get ten chances to get the occupations of the guests. Turns out the Italian brothers were imported because back home they were octopus wrestlers and an American cannery hired them, to bring the octupuses up from the briny deep and over to the cannery and the panel got this!

    Can you imagine a more obscure occupation? I should go back and watch the episode again. I hope Arlene Francis got it. “And I must ask, do your delicacies ever grace the tables of Sardi’s? Because after an evening at the theater my husband, Martin Gabel, and I, enjoy repasting at Sardi’s and we adore the calamari.”

    [One Italian brother turns to the other: “Who’s this freak?”]

  8. Something to celebrate! Today is Chuck Todd’s birthday. He is 52. What a blessing he has proven to be among the punderati. I mean, I think he has. I’ve never watched a moment of his on-air punditocracy.

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