Tuck and Scrambler and Google

Our turtles, Tuck and Scrambler are both females.

They are Mississippi Mud Red Ear Slider Turtles.

One likes to escape, has twice, we assume it was Tuck going on adventures, but I never verified before returning her home. (Let me pause and tell you that Tuck is the turtle from the Wonder Pets, a cute little cartoon, where three classroom pets rescue other animals all over the world after the students go home. Lenny I think is a hamster and Ming Ming is a baby duck.)
Eric made a chicken wire lid that will allow their special lighting to shine through unfiltered and not be able to escape. Thank you Eric.

Last weekend I noticed a few white spots on each of them.  I then did what every internet accessing American does these days, I GOOGLED the spots.

Could be one of two things.  The shell growing/molting or shell rot.  
Not wanting to raise alarms with the kids around I waited to discuss with Eric. Which means I forgot.  For about 2 days, then when he noticed the white spots, I noticed then that the spots had gotten worse and more had shown up.  He then Googled and found home remedies to help clear up shell rot. 

The next day, they stopped swimming.  We noticed their eyes were either very freaky looking while sleeping or covered in puss.  The following day, they didn't eat a thing.  Their eyes, we were pretty sure just freaky looking while sleeping, but signs of improvement were not showing.

Not a great picture of sleeping eyes

So on Friday we took the turtles to the vet.  When we got them, I never intended on taking them to the vet.  How absurd taking turtles to the vet!  However, when they are giving signs of potentially rotting and slowly dying in front of your eyes and you have three young children also watching, some sort of action needs to be taken.  Shell rot, can be treated very easily.

I stayed in the van with the kids while Eric took the turtles in.  Here is the news we got.

They look and appear to be very HEALTHY.

They are HAPPY.

And they are trying to HIBERNATE.

They are growing new shells, causing the discoloration.  They like to eat dog food --which is good because Kjetil likes to feed them dog food.  If we warm their water up a bit they will become more active, however, overall we're doing great raising these turtles, fifty bucks please.

They must be hibernating because this is Scrambler. She got her name for being so skidish and quickly scrambling a way if someone even walked by their tank. Yet she let me take several pictures of her, tap on the tank and the only sign of movement was her lowering her back leg that she had had up in the air.  If she was awake, you'd also see the red marking and her eyes, instead you just see a couple of gray bumps where they eyes are.

So now you know a little more about turtles.  Even if kept indoors year round, they will hibernate.