Like a kid in a candy store

Wesley has a little five gallon fish tank in his bedroom. A few months ago the light in it burned out so I went and bought a new bulb. I came home, put the bulb in and it still didn't work. So I did nothing at that point. The two little fish that lived in it sat in the darkness for several months. I felt this was no kind of life for them so I netted them out and plunked them into the 30 gallon tank in the living room. So there sat Wesley's poor empty dark tank in his room. Without a light it was kind of useless so I went and purchased him a new tank a couple of weeks ago. We set it up in his new bedroom and it's beautiful. The light works great and it's a wonderful night light for the kid. But, it's empty. I was waiting until this weekend so that it would have a week to age the water and be a good environment for a new little fish or two.

So yesterday morning once Wesley woke up we took a Mother/Son outing to the pet store. He was so excited to pick out a fish. This pet store deals in reptiles and fish...that's it. We walk in and immediately in front of us is a display cage with little teeny tiny tortoises in it. They are all happily eating lettuce and I'm just totally smitten. I'm pretty much a kid in a candy store when it comes to pet stores. These little guys were so cute, you have no idea. They are three weeks old and about the size of a chicken egg. I had lifted Wesley up to look at them when the store clerk came over and said "If you like those little guys you'll love the big one walking around the store." So we set out to find the "Big One". It didn't take too long, we turned a corner and there was this giant tortoise walking toward us down the isle. It was the coolest thing I've seen in quite some time. It was, literally, as big as the top of your stove. I squatted down and pointed to it and told Wesley to look at the tortoise. He's all "what tortoise?" And I'm all "The giant thing walking toward us that takes up the WHOLE isle!". You could tell he was looking somewhere else because he was walking slowly and then just stopped dead in his tracks. He just stood there and then said "We go somewhere else? NOW?" It was a hoot.

The tortoise was an African Spurred Tortoise and they get huge, fast. This one was eight years old and I could only pick it off the ground a few inches (I asked first of course). It had to be well over 65 pounds. When I was doing research on what species of tortoise to buy I seriously considered an African Spurred but decided on a Leopard Tortoise instead because they DON'T get huge very fast. Don't get me wrong, Cecil will hopefully get big eventually but over the span of 20+ years instead of 5 years.

It does make me want to get a baby African Spurred to keep Cecil company, I'm just afraid he'd outgrow their friendship too quickly. They aren't cheap either...the tiny babies are $160. The big adult that we saw walking around the store was $250. Oh how I'd love to have that thing, make a pen for it outside during the warm months and a pen in the basement during the winter. Sean, I'm afraid, has lost his sense of humor when it comes to pets though. Maybe I can revisit the idea once some of the hairy, four legged pets go to the big pet store in the sky. Anyways, it turned out to be a very neat visit to the pet store, one that Wesley won't forget for awhile. Oh and after all that, they didn't even have any fancy goldfish for his fish tank.

Isn't that cool?