This past weekend the foundation had a big turtle release blowout. Harmony, Stu, Elvis and Jetty were all given their walking papers and sent back to the ocean to terrorize other marine life. Evil little splashing creatures!
Jetty, always the ringleader, lead the gang into the surf.
This leaves poor little Chestnut all alone in the big turtle tanks. He doesn't seem to be able to get the height or distance on his splash that Jetty and Elvis could handle.
Its starting to get quiet in the hospital as almost all the patients have been released. Now its time to start getting everything prepared for cold stun season.
Celeste is a "tax day" gray seal, she was brought in on April 15th. This summer she developed a nasty case of seal pox, poor baby. Seal pox is similar to human pox, so she's had a bunch of bumps all over. She had to be fed and handled separately from the other seals. She's looking much better the past few weeks and she's starting to play more in her tank. Today she played make Barbara guess the sounds coming from my tank.
I can haz cheeseburger?
She's having a physical tomorrow so with any luck she'll be all better and ready to start coming off her meds. Celeste is up for adoption if you'd like to help this sweet face.
Yesterday I took my turn at Jaws' tank. Its nothing special, just scrub the tank, time his breathing when he comes up for air and talk to any crowds that form about who he is and what he's doing in our cetacean tank.
The update on Jaws is that his non eating issues are pretty much normal behaviors of male sea turtles in captivity during mating season. You could insert your joke now but just wait.
So about 3ish a crowd of about 30-40 kids forms outside the tank so I go to talk with them. I'm all researched in things Jaws, I'm fielding all sorts of normal kid type questions with ease. Oh I'm getting much much better at all of this now. And then it happened.
"Excuse me but what is he doing now"
It seems that Jaws swam from the side of the pool to the center and proceeded to mate with the drain. That's right kiddies Jaws is masturbating for the crowd.
I can't laugh, I can't cry and I'm pretty sure I can't tell 8 year olds the truth without causing a news headline. What I did was take a deep breath, look small children right in the eye and say "oh he just has an itch". That's right I lied. Or evaded the specific truth. It really depends on your perspective and if you want some random stranger and 400 lb turtle teaching your child about sex.
The weather was nice so I decided to set up my study plan for the Enrolled Agents exam on my laptop outside on the patio. I like to think of the EA exam as the IRS punishing me for making "bad" career choices when I got out of college. Damn me for wanting to make a living and move out of my parents house....
Before I could get properly started I had to make my daily Starbucks run for my green tea fix. I started to place my order, a venti iced green tea - no sweetener - when the nice people behind the counter informed me that the trenta cups had arrived. They wanted to know if I wanted to try one.
I'm no Samwise Gamgee of course I want the bigger size! I waited and dreamed of my massive new tea that would surely last me all through the day. Turns out 10oz more isn't all that big a jump visually. I sadly did not get my Prancing Pony moment.
So here I am having a break from setting up my next three weeks worth of study time. I have to say the waterfall upgrade I made this year in my yard was worth it. Its a nice bit of white noise that drowns out some of the more urban sounds of my neighborhood.
I've been avoiding this test all summer. But with fall coming I can't much hide from it. Its just such a test of minutia meh. Here's an example of an actual question:
Your client buys a piano in 1988. Ten years later he has it tuned and finds a bag that contains $100,000 in cash inside the piano. Is this a taxable event?
I love my clients really. But if it took them ten years to tune it I'd have some questions about throwing away money on things they don't use. I mean wouldn't that kind of money effect the sound quality and shouldn't you tune it more often anyway? And damnit look what you did, you told me about it and now I have to put it on your tax return.
Seriously this is something I need to remember? I can't just research the problem like other accountants? So off I go to cram tons of mostly useless tax information in my head. Yay!
I've had quite the turtle week. Last week for the first time in a while I fed the turtles. What greedy little buggers they are. And so very passive aggressive. They love you when you're dropping squid in their tanks but the minute you stop the love is gone. Once again Elvis and Jetty managed to soak down the back of my shirt while I fed the turtles in the tank next to them.
Elvis
Jetty
After hanging out with Beavis and Butthead I was sent to work on cleaning up the cetacean tank and I got to hang with its newest patient.
This is Jaws. Jaws is a 300lb loggerhead sea turtle. He started out his life living in the Mall of America but soon outgrew his exhibit. The Long Island aquarium adopted him 10 years ago and he's been happily living in the big shark tank ever since. But over the past few weeks he hasn't been eating regularly so he was brought to the Foundation's tank to be monitored and get some special care. Yesterday he ate a good bunch of squid and tried on more than one occasion to eat my scrub brush. This was seen as a good thing, not the whole lets dunk the volunteer with her own scrub brush but the fact that he was looking for objects that may have food attached.
Lastly, Rudy, the Kemp's Ridley, who lives in the rescue center display tank, went to have an MRI this past week. Interestingly he had his MRI done at the same facility where my dog Gimli had his MRI and back surgery done. Long Island Veterinary Specialists donated the cost of the MRI so the exact cause of Rudy's shell deformity could be determined. It turns out that his shell issue is not related to the boat strike that brought him to us but to a permanent spinal deformity, similar to Scoliosis in humans. He is now officially deemed unreleasable to the wild so now begins the search for a forever home for Rudy. When you come see him at the rescue center and he isn't eating or is being fussy its probably due to some spinal discomfort more than his diva attitude.
