Time to Eat

in Turtle Town.



This guy is the biggest of the Turtle Town residents... and he tends to push his weight around. I've seen him nudge the tortoises (although, I have discovered they may be box turtles) out of the way to get at the dry food (some of the Tetra Pond Food gets tossed in the pools, and some gets put into a shallow dish).
He's also a glutton. He'll stuff his mouth as much as he can before heading back to the pool to swallow it; then he'll come back to do it again, and repeat the process a dozen times. Here, it looks like after he packed his cheeks like a chipmunk, he went back to share... don't let that fool you - it's not in his nature. I think he just dropped a morsel or two.

Now this one is quite a character. Besides his bizarre orange color, I can't get over his nose!



He makes me think of a Sesame Street character.




... such as Telly Monster, (if not for Telly's close-set eyes). He does seem to have Telly's nose!

So, as you can see, we're still on turtle duty. It seems we've become their semi-permanent surrogates. Our neighbors blew in town, spent a whirlwind week packing a few essentials and taking care of some matters, then scooted back to Georgia where they've enrolled their boys in school. They said "they might be back for Christmas." (???)

Lots of people are heading out these days. For as long as I've lived here (30 years), people have been relocating to our area. Now, they seem to be fleeing; our neighbors appear to have moved to Georgia, one of the closing agents here at the title company recently advised me that she and her family will be moving to South Carolina... I've heard that that the size of the classes at the schools are decreasing (down about 30% from last year). A friend of mine that works at a bank said it's unnervingly slow (I can relate), and the number of vacant homes in our neighborhoods is astronomical. It's a strange time to be a SW Florida resident... surreal in an ominous, unsettling sort of way.

Wait for the LORD;

be strong and take heart, and wait for the LORD.

Psalm 27:14