Day 3: Box Turtle Brumation Safety Checks

When you live in an interspecies flock, getting the deep, restful sleep you require can present some special challenges.

For instance, maybe you are a “hibernating species,” which means you like to spend your winter season – all of it – sleeping.

So you go to sleep around October or November each year, anticipating a blissful break from the shell-less paparazzi (that otherwise follows you everywhere) until at least February or March at the earliest.

You then settle your adorable shelled self down into your warm straw that your mommy got for you and you doze right off.

But then all of a sudden, your slumbers are abruptly interrupted.

Somehow, the shell-less paparazzi has found you! Their flashbulbs are pop-pop-popping! as you blink your sleepy red eyes.

Your mommy – the worst of the paparazzi lot, frankly – is there, and she holds you in her hand and turns you round and round and checks you out all over, peering into your eyes, down your nostrils, all around your shell and straight up into certain very private areas that a manly male box turtle would really rather keep to himself.

She then coos at you and mutters something about “brumation box turtle safety checks.”

You, meanwhile, can’t help exuding “cuteness” instead of “irritation,” which means she just keeps admiring you instead of letting you go back to sleep.

Finally, after adding fresh warm hay and tucking you back in, she pats your cute oval shell and whispers, “Until next time.”

Awesome.

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