Dusty meets Mickey!

Dusty the Ball Python cruising through her neighborhood.

What's that up there on the branch?

Another cousin of Mickey Mouse has dropped by selling magazine subscriptions! This mouse was smarter than most and quickly realized that a longer life was only possible by climbing out of the terrarium.

Unfortunately, the little branch does not go all the way to the top. Little Mickey was hoping for a miracle at this point.

Do mice believe in an afterlife? Did little Mickey make it into Disney World? Did he see a bright light and hear the Mickey Mouse Club song as Dusty squeezed the life out of him?

Was he still alive when Dusty started to swallow him face-first? If there is such a thing as reincarnation, did little Mickey get reborn as a snake? Perhaps one day he will be a famous lawyer?

Playing mouse the hard way

Dusty the Ball Python sees the mouse

Snake strikes at mouse

Dusty crushes the life out of the mouse

Snake eats mouse, head-first

Men charged in alligator barbecue

By JENNIFER BABSON excerpt from Miami Herald

KEY WEST - Two Keys men face criminal charges after wildlife officials say they killed and butchered a protected American Alligator last month -- serving her up at a backyard barbecue a few days later.

The two men, Timothy B. Goll, 18, of Marathon, and Jordan T. Milo, 20, of Big Pine Key, have been charged with killing the animal, a third degree felony.

State and federal wildlife investigators say two other people -- both high school students, one a minor -- are also believed to be involved in the March 24 incident. They have not yet been charged.
The men are alleged to have shot the female adult gator and then beaten her death.

"They apparently used a pellet gun to disable it and then used a baseball bat to kill it," said Lt. Steve Acton, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is investigating the incident along with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The animal's unwanted body parts were discarded in area canals and later recovered. The gator lived in a freshwater pond on Big Pine Key. The incident is among several crocodile and alligator killings that have occurred in the Keys recently.

Five Dade County men were charged in a December incident in the Upper Keys in which an American crocodile was captured, dragged behind a vehicle, and killed.

Early last month, two endangered American crocodiles were found dead -- apparently from gunshot wounds -- in the Lower Keys. Their carcasses were dumped along remote areas off U.S. 1.

Texas Yellow Mud Turtle

This is my Texas Yellow Mud Turtle. It is about four inches long. It is a pretty neat little turtle. I have it in the ten gallon tank which has tropical fish also. The small mud turtles do not seem to be very fast when it comes to hunting fish, so the tropical fish seem to mostly survive in the tank. I have a variety of fish. Glass shrimp, neons, mollies, guppies, zebra danios, a red-tail barb, and I had a catfish but it looks like it was eaten by the turtles.

The Texas Mud Turtle has a sort of mustard color. It is named a Yellow Mud Turtle because the skin on its neck is sort of yellowish. It is different from the standard Mud Turtles that I have gotten in the past.

It also seems to be more shy and thoughtful. That may sound silly, but this turtle will look around and turn her head at things. The little turtle seems to be thinking about what to do. Too bad turtles can't talk, it would be interesting to hear what it is thinking about.

She has a very short tail, so she is a female turtle. My child has named all the turtles but I don't remember this one's name. This little turtle also seems to enjoy looking at its own reflection in the glass of the aquarium. When I see the turtle doing that, it reminds me of that song by Siouxie and the Banshees (Through the Looking Glass). The larger turtles in the other aquarium are used to looking through the glass. They can see me when I walk by, and they start sticking their heads out of the water and paddling when they want food. I guess it must be weird to be a turtle in an aquarium looking out at people walking by.