Well actually she's a he...

so tonight was super interesting... well let me start with today
today was my first day back to class which went well aside from the fact that this semesters classes are not quite as stimulating as the ones last semester, but there are still three to attend for the first time before I'll claim this semester as boring.  Then after class I had lunch with the girls to catch up on our lives since we haven't seen each other in a month.  That was also a blast.  Then I came home and got a few things done around the apartment and took a nap since I know I won't always have time for that in the coming weeks.  After my nap I got back to work on getting things clean, put away, and stuff for school.
So here is where the real story begins... I started to clean my turtle Josie's tank since I had taken her home over break and wanted her home to be nice and clean.  After cleaning all the filters and decor and such I gave Josie her usual toothbrush scrub down and set her in her travel tank on the counter so that I could fill the tank.  Well little did I know she was going to try to be a super turtle and flip over her little plastic travel tank and fall the 3.5 feet to the floor.  I rushed to her and immediately freaked out because it looked as if she had landed on the back of her shell and some of her "intestines" were coming out near her tail.  There wasn't any blood so I started calling vets around to see if anyone took reptiles and while doing that I googled "Red Eared Slider Fell" and found a post that described a similar situation where a turtle had fallen some distance and had seemingly injured itself to where it's intestines were coming out, it said it is very similar to a hernia in a human and is called prolapse...so I continue to freak out but I know what it is and I found a reptile vet in Roanoke with emergency hours.  I packed her up and left as fast as I could to get her there.  The whole way to roanoke it poured which was awful, also I may have been absolutely flipping out.  My dad told me he would meet me at the vet.  By the time I got there what I thought was a "prolapse" had gone back in but my turtle still needed to be checked out.
The vet was very nice and he looked her over using a special light and found some bruising in her shell using a special light.  He showed me a diagram of a turtle and asked me what I saw looked like.  I pointed to an organ that said abdominal muscle bundle and looked exactly like what I had seen.  Then doctor Stewart tells me not to be alarmed but actually Josie is a Joe and what I saw was his penis and his pelvic muscle!!!!!!!!! So I learned that she is actually a he, the vet said that often people will tell you wrong when they are hatchlings because it is difficult to tell.  He ended up having some bruising and a little blood in his mouth which he said could come from the fall inflaming his lungs.  So he gave him a shot and taught me how to give him a shot which I did and I have continue to do for the next 4 days.  He can only get in the water for a little bit in the morning and evening for the next four days and needs to be kept calm and warm.  What a traumatic night! Please say a prayer for Joe he is very special to me and I hope more than anything he will be ok.
Hope tomorrow is better than today and that this is not a sign of what's to come of the semester!
kb

the best is yet to come...

Well this is my first blog post! I am super excited to be doing this.  So many exciting things are going on in my life, I was going to start a journal but then I thought it would be nice to share with others and get some feed back on some of my projects, photographs and such.  I don't know anything about blogging but I am looking forward to posting bits and pieces of myself.  I hope through this experience I can learn a little bit more about myself and share with others the things I love...

For tonight I'm not going to write a long post but rather leave you with a poem that inspires me and is origin of my blog title.  Mary Oliver is one of my very favorite poets and in the last stanza are some words I live by:

Starlings in Winter

 

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

 

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

 

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

 

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

 

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

 

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

 

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

 

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard.  I want

 

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~