Abbott Ecology

  Tortoise Re-articulation My friend rescued a tortoise and gave her a beautiful home. Unfortunately, Tippee had not been cared for properly prior to Dinah's rescue, and she became very sick within a few months of Dinah having her. Dinah had never had a pet die before, and it was really hard on her. She trusted me to bury Tippee and gave me permission to keep the skeleton once it was ready. On Sep 9th (2023), Dinah brought me Tippee's body. I held onto her for a while because Dinah kept checking to make sure she was really dead. After about 12 hours I put her in the freezer, then buried her once I had a chance, with some purple mums because she loved eating flowers.  A few months ago I pulled Tippee's body back out of the dirt. The flowers had been long gone since the winter froze them, and the skeleton was well preserved. I didn't consider that the shell could be several bones articulated together like a skull, or that the skull of the tortoise itself would be made up ...

This story gets its own post because it was an event.  07/26/24 I had the first Friday of that crazy busy (rural med) rotation remote. I needed to make some calls for the clinic, and can’t do that at home with all the chaos. I went to my school for the quiet morning and stayed to go to COMC (The MSK clinic that I used to staff) and get some tasks done on campus like following up on my TMJ project. Anyway, I’m going out to my car at the end of a Friday and I find an egg sac . I pick it up, something inside wiggles. Naturally, I must have it (I hope it’s a mantis egg ootheca! ) I take it home and put it in one of my bug cups and then put the bug cup in the terrarium. Now we wait.  After nearly a month of waiting I gave up. The inner part didn’t wiggle anymore by the time I took it home and I was pretty sure it was dead. I kept the egg sac in the cup but removed it from the terrarium with the intention to cut it open in a few days. Days turned into weeks as I got progressively b...