Meet Mario and Luigi

I submitted this as a fun addition to our homepage at work. I'm posting it here because the post I'm currently working on is taking forever and I don't want the world to miss me too much :)

As many of you may not know, I have turtles.

Mario and Luigi have been in the Thai household for over 11 years. When they were gifted to me and my sister, they were slightly larger than quarter coins. Now they are larger than the palm of our hands.

For a period of time we thought Luigi (my sister’s turtle) was blind because he wasn’t able to eat the food pellets that were right in front of him. He would aim, snap, and miss two out of three times. Now we know Luigi is not blind (he just has bad aim) because he is quick to dive off the platform when there are visitors near the tank. Luigi also enjoys swimming into the glass wall (he does not get anywhere but he still paddles furiously). When swimming tires him out, he likes to straddle the two floating platforms in the tank (as pictured). Mario (my turtle) is more of an observer. He observes when there is food in the tank and he is good at snapping most of it up before Luigi can get to it. Mario always has a voracious appetite, which is why he is noticeably larger than Luigi. Mario has claimed the larger platform for himself and whenever Luigi is in his territory, he will climb up on Luigi’s back and chill there until Luigi dives off.

When Mario is not eating, he is busy plotting ways to escape. He did succeed one time and made it all the way down a flight of stairs unscathed (we still can’t figure out how he climbed out of his old tank to start with). I found him hiding beneath the curtains near the front door. He hasn’t been seen out of his tank since but I hope it’s because he has no desire to escape the lovely new home and basking platform he shares with Luigi.


The End (for now).