Our Domestic Reptile Celebrates Her Second Birthday

Our little Rocket has turned two on 25th August. I could not believe that it has only been a year and a day since we brought her home.

We had a lot of fun in the past year – watching her „surf“ her food bowl every morning, run perimeter checks of her tortoise table, climb her house and rocket down to face plant into the substrate, growing her food and letting her explore the lawns in front of our building, introducing her to our little niece and of course worrying about her when something doesn´t look quite right, because she is our little baby.

I am also very proud and happy that she is growing, slowly but surely. At least once a month I weigh her on kitchen scales and use digital calipers to measure the straight length of her carapace (the top half of the shell).

As you can see in the picture above, the difference is not huge, but it is there! The box is a smallest one of a set from Paperchase and is added there for visual reference.

August 2016:   • Weight: 94g

                         • Straight length of carapace: 76.3mm

August 2017:   • Weight: 151g

                         • Straight length of carapace: 88.56 mm

Shark Week Biscuits and Visit to the Aquarium

A while ago you could have seen a picture of my very messy kitchen worktop (below) on my Facebook page. It wasn't my intention to make Linzer biscuits in shape of little sharks straight away. I was baking birthday treats for someone else when the idea occured to me - and since it was Shark Week and I had some cookie cutters from the Natural History Museum shop, I gave it a go.

After baking (I promise to publish the recipe here soon) and cooling I joined them together with jam and decorated them with melted milk chocolate. So here they are. I guess they resemble blacktip reef sharks best, what do you think?

Later in the week I also had to visit London, which gave me the perfect excuse to check out the Sea Life. I sat in front of the massive tank for good twenty minutes, just watching these majestic creatures swim past me and then more time reading all the labels and displays, trying to soak up as much information as I could.

I know some things that happen during Shark Week have been criticised because they are controversial and don't have much to do with the original purpose of it - education and conservation of these beautiful marine predators. It is sad. However, I prefer to focus on the original message, thatour planet is a balanced system, full of magnificent creatures that need to be protected. We cannot protect them without understanding them and education is the first step towards gaining this understanding.