Pitter Patter Of 5 Little Feet!

As of last weekend we have become the proud parents of 5 little baby tortoises. We wanted to liven up the house with the noise of little feet so off we went to the pet store on Emirates Road. They had a great range of pets, from fish to bearded dragons, birds, frogs, mice, snakes, rabbits, the usual dogs and cats but the highlight were massive land turtles approximately 60cm long!!

Aidan would have liked to get another snake, there were beautiful red snakes with black markings – coral snakes I think they were. But the buggery was the pet store only sold live mice at Dhm20 (dirhams – local currency) each, equivalent of AUD$6.50 and didn’t sell any frozen mice - back in Australia we could have bought a packet of frozen mice for that price!. The snakes were reasonably price but it was going to be damn expensive to feed them.

In the end the active little baby tortoises swimming around in a tank caught our eye. We were excited to hear the noise pitter pattering little feet around the house, well actually little tortoise paws. The price per baby tortoise was Dhm75 (AUD$25), now we knew they were giving us the inflated expatriate price and if we headed down to Satwa (a non-expat suburb where you can find most things) it wouldn’t be so pricy.

To Satwa we drive and eureka!! We discovered a row of pet shops that sold baby tortoises at the price of Dhm25 (AUD$8.30) for 2. The nice salesman put together a set up kit for us which included the tank, pebbles, large rocks, light and food – dried shrimps. We bought 6 tortoises but unfortunately 1 didn’t make it after 2 days.

Aidan was most happy that they didn’t make any noises but to our surprise, they are busy at night time rearranging the décor in their tank by moving pebbles around. We’ve notice they have an established hobby, building the equivalent of human pyramids – they are constantly climbing on top of each other.