Welcome to A-Z, a new mini series at Daisybutter, a fortnightly series that takes a letter from the alphabet and where I aim to introduce the many facets of myself to the blog.
The A-Z of Michelle is a 26-part series on Daisybutter. Once a fortnight, I'll be introducing a new 'thing' about myself or an opinion that I'd like to share or a short story snippet. You get the gist. And each will hail from a respective letter of the alphabet. I've become quite enamoured with the alphabet as of late, even renaming my magazine to A for Aesthetic (oh so creatively from its former Aesthetic Magazine), heh.
Meet my beautiful baby Horsfield tortoises, Bertle and Eric. Oh I could just squish these little loves of mine! I'd wanted a pet tortoise for more than 5 years when finally in 2014, I managed to persuade my parents to let me house two. I lovingly picked them up, drove them home and built their pen myself and they're my absolute pride and joy! I first introduced them to Daisybutter in this post but wanted to share a little update now that they're a little older - they're 28 months now! - and (not really) wiser.
Bertle is my little lady. We call her Queen B (yay Blair Waldorf!) because she rules the roost at Chez Chai! I picked her because she seems adventurous and headstrong amongst her brothers and sisters, roaming around and cheekily stealing food from the others. When I first brought Bertle home, I just adored her beautifully dark and deep markings. Many others have a more 'translucent' shell but hers is just gorgeous, to me, anyway! Bertle has grown quite a lot in these almost-two years. In fact, she's actually on a diet that the vet recommended because she's a food stealer and certainly doesn't share food, Joey Tribbiani style ;) Her favorite foods include Brussels sprouts, strawberries, kale, daisies and cabbage. Honestly? Cabbage underneath her terrarium lamp is the worst idea, heh. Bertle remains a curious creature. My Mum often finds her scaling the little playstick 'huts' that I set up for her, in a bid to escape! She loves exploring her pen and equally enjoys being handled. She particularly enjoys bullying E...
Eric is the gorgeous little lad that my sister chose. Aptly named Prince Eric (of A Little Mermaid fame) because of his meek and ever so quiet personality, he is the cutest little thing. Eric is often bullied by Bertle. She quite literally walks all over him, eats his food, steals his sun spot... I could go on! He seems to be scared to eat and mostly enjoys being hand-fed by my sister, which is a tough one when she's away at University! But when he does eat, he likes to eat strawberries, Chinese Kai-lan, lambs lettuce and kale. Most of the time, he's very happy having a little stroll around the pen before settling underneath the heat lamp for a little R&R and he's mostly active in the night!
I wrote a little more about owning and keeping Horsfield/Russian tortoises over here if you're interested. Oh and in case you were wondering, Queen B and Prince Eric live quite happily in England, they're currently being looked after by my parents whilst I've been on my jollies (:
