the party dude

If you've ever talked to me or looked at this blog at all, you are probably familiar with Michelangelo, my turtle. He is the cutest, sweetest turtle ever and I just love him to pieces.

This is the story of how Mikey and I came to be the best of friends: I went to Jay's Jungle in downtown Provo about 7 years ago at the spunky young age of 19, looking for a turtle of my very own, and they had a whole bunch of ugly water turtles and weird-shelled turtles in there. I was starting to change my mind when finally I got to a big fish tank full of tortoises just piled on top of each other. One little guy peered up at me and then took off climbing over the others to get to the other side of the tank. As soon as he looked at me I pointed to him and said "I want that one!" It was love at first sight. I glanced down at the label and it said "Russian Tortoise". I had just finished taking a Russian class over the summer at BYU-Idaho, so it's pretty much like it was meant to be.

I bought that little turtle and brought him to Petsmart with me in a shoe box. I gave him a Russian name at first, but it didn't take. Inside, I knew he was really Michelangelo. His little eyes told me so. Once we got that straightened out, we were BFFs. He's seriously the best. He lets anyone pet his little head and he thinks he's a little ninja and finds new crazy ways of playing hide-n-seek every day. He comes to eat when you sing to him. He smiles at you when you talk to him. He's just so dang lovable.



Anyway.. I got him a fish tank to live in, (which I later found out is bad for tortoises, so that had to go), and then a variety of different sized tupperware storage containers. I've decorated them in tons of ways...paint, scrapbooking paper, fish tank wallpaper, etc. Jason helped me make him a bamboo hut once to go inside his tank, and it was awesome.
I always wanted to get him a proper house, but I just never had the funding, or the space. I promised him that one day he would have the coolest house ever, and he's been waiting patiently for 7 years. I researched them forever online and let me tell you- there are no cool tortoise houses. There was maybe one, but it just wasn't practical, he'd escape in no time. Well...the time has come. As soon as we moved, Logan and I went to Lowes pretty much every day for a week and got all the supplies we needed to build him the ultimate beach house complete with a burrowing nook and a party loft/swimming pool area (I wanted to include a diving board, or at least a rope swing, but Logan discouraged it). We even special-ordered awesome seahorse handles to make it extra beachy. Logan spent all week measuring and hammering and sawing and I did stuff like, um, help paint, and encourage him.
And now...TA DA!

seahorse handles for the burrowing nook

complete with an  upstairs party loft and pool

Logan introducing Mikey to his new beach house

 I took a video of his first time exploring his house- It's all red because of his heat lamp, but meh. whatever.  He absolutely loves his new place, he was so excited. A little too excited, actually- he was up all night the first few days just exploring...which would be cool except he sleeps in my room and it was real loud. Oh well, I'm just glad he's finally moved in. Hurray for Logan being awesome and building Mikey his dream house! :)