A learning experience

Even turtles can have them.

Kinda crappy weather during the day today, but it cleared up towards the afternoon, so that by the time I got home it was actually really nice. I decided to take the guys out ... first time they've been out since Raphael's big scare on Saturday. Of course I was determined to keep an extremely close eye on them all. :-) But I was most of all really interested to see how Raphael would react. Does he remember anything of what happened or has he forgotten it already?

These are relatively primitive animals, with pretty simple brains, so I wouldn't have been surprised if it hadn't made any noticeable impact on him. But he definitely remembers. This little road that is almost just a footpath runs alongside the lawn on two sides. Normally Raphael mostly walks towards one of these two stretches of ... road, or whatever. The one by our building he wants to get across to burrow underneath these bushes that I mentioned. The other one he also wants to cross, mostly to get to a tall hedge that is on the far side of another bit of lawn there. Also to burrow underneath it. He likes to burrow underneath things. :-)

Normally I can't keep him away from these places ... he keeps going there and I'm always having to go bring him back from there. And when I let him go again he immediately heads back again. :-D Usually when I let them out of the cage I have to bring him back from one of these two directions in just a few minutes' time. But not today. It was really weird - I've never seen him act like that before. He stayed away from the footpaths almost completely. Instead of going there, he mostly went up to the tennis court (not as impressive as it sounds) and underneath the big wheeled trash cans that the janitors keep there for garden waste. He normally has little to no interest in going there at all. But today, he hardly wanted to go anywhere else. He did walk around on the lawn as well, but only on the parts of it that are 'away' from the footpath. It took him one hour to finally pick one of his normal routes towards the bushes by our building. I've never seen him act like that before. He specifically steered away from these places where he normally always goes ... but where this really scary thing also happened.

I actually hadn't really expected him to remember. But he does surprise me sometimes.