Category Archives: Apple’s Little Pets

Doggies, torties & sometimes, butterflies

Jan13

The mighty caterpillar

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The mighty caterpillar

I have a thing for caterpillar.

Maybe it was because of this. It was a very engaging book to me when I was a little girl. The caterpillar literally ate its way through the pages of the book before morphing into a beautiful butterfly!

Or this. They’re cupcakes. I ♥ cupcakes.

Or maybe, it’s because of the fact that a fat little caterpillar could turn into something like this.

Imagine my joy, when I stumbled upon a bunch of them crawling on my mom’s calamansi plant few days ago.

But mom wasn’t that pleased and wanted to kill them all, since they’re eating up all the leaves and destroying her plant.

But I’d never seen them morphed before and I wanted to! Vivian said she managed to watch one morphed into a butterfly in the little container that she kept the caterpillar!

common mormon papilio polytes

Well, here they are! My baby caties!

All four of them! The one on the far right just crawled out of its skin today! It was black earlier and now it’s in a shade of yellowish green! It’s probably in its fourth or fifth (last) instar now.

The bigger and greener one on its left is about to pupate soon!

Can’t wait! :D

Oct28

Fool Proof Scheduled Feeder

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Fool Proof Scheduled Feeder

I’ll be going away again for two weeks.. This time, with my mom as well. My mom took care of torty when I went to Australia for a month.

So who’s gonna feed my torty this time around??

If I were to depend on my brother, my torty will either die of over eating or die of hunger.

Die of over eating because I am 110% sure that he’s gonna forget to feed them. Then when he remembers, it could be a few days later. Which he would then compensate by giving XXL servings to my torty.

Die of hunger…well just by simply forgetting to feed my torty altogether.

As for my dad, the only animal that he’d feed is his dog. Hoping for my dad to feed my torty for two weeks by unscrewing a bottle of green pellets and a bottle of shrimp, scooping one scoop out from each bottle, and putting the food onto the food platform in the aquarium, closing both bottles and putting away the spoon sounds a teeny bit too much of a hassle for my dad lor.

But my torty need to eat!!

Must devise a FOOL PROOF method for my dad to feed torty!!

So here’s the plan:

I’ll ask Dad to feed torty once every two days, in the mornings, before he leaves for work.

I have scooped out 6 servings of food, packed and labeled individually with both the dates and day of the week and taped them on my aquarium so Dad’ll definitely not miss it.

I have also labeled where Dad should put the food. I think it’s damn obvious for him to see. Got arrow some more!

After feeding, Dad can just leave the used bags on this tray. Don’t have to walk to the kitchen to throw the bag away. They’re reusable anyway. :D

As for the fish, just unscrew the yellow cap and sprinkle micro food pellets on the water. Just like sprinkling black pepper on your soup!

With big, bold hand writings, clear and concise instructions, my torty will definitely won’t die of hunger or die of over eating!!

Right??

*fingers crossed*

Sep19

Our doggies just got spayed

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Our doggies just got spayed

Few days back, we brought our dogs to the vet to get them spayed to avoid complications involving their uterus later in their old doggie lives. Yeah, and we sorta kinda wanted to see how our pug will look like when her coat and her black muzzle turns white.

Here’s Goldie, my aunt’s dog.

She rushed out of the post-surgery room and whined sadly to my aunt when we went over to pick her and Sparkle up. Poor Goldie, she couldn’t stop whining to her mommy (my aunt). My aunt had to console her, keep telling her that everything’s okay and fine to calm her down. She was trembling so much.

And this is Sparkle in her beloved basket. She loves her basket as much as I love my bed.

Vet said that she’s very jumpy and that we need to keep an eye on her and make sure that she’s always calm and composed until the wound is completely healed, which will take around 10 days’ time. So yeah, I couldn’t startle her for 10 days. This morning when I went to feed her and she was so excited to see me, I had to go, “it’s okay, Sparkle, it’s just me! Calm down, don’t jump! Caaaaaaalmm…. yes…. caaaaaaaaalmm….” And it got me thinking, wouldn’t it hurt if Sparkle keeps jumping up and down like that? *shakes head* Oh yeah, did I ever mention she’s hyperactive?

There. Right down the middle is where she got cut open like a dead fish’s opened mouth.

Vet said we had to inspect the stitches by lifting her up like this to make sure that it’s not wet or nothing’s leaking out from it. Yes, eugh. I know. And if you’re wondering, the black dots on her skin is just pigmentation, just like how, we have moles and marks.

I checked today. The stitch is dry and nice. Sparkle finally got her appetite back as well. She didn’t eat much yesterday, which was very heart-aching to watch because she usually can’t stop eating. But it was somewhat cool as well, since I didn’t have to clean her poo today as she has nothing to poop out.

Here’s my Sparkle enjoying the scenic view on the way back from the vet, in her beloved basket.

Jun19

Torty’s new home

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Torty’s new home

Torty’s daddy (Dahbriukay) finally went back to Melbourne. What’s left here in Malaysia is the poor mommy, yours truly, looking after two very special torties. Remind me to get to the special part later. Before Dahbriukay left, he upgraded torty’s home from a tiny little plastic tank that was half a ft long to a 2 ft aquarium aka their villa, fully equipped with basking lamp, water filter, timer and a mad ass expensive UVB florescent tube (the whole set up is a little over 40 times the cost of two baby Red Eared Sliders).

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Loti loves basking so much that now he's just a shade lighter than guilinggao.

Before we bought the UVB tube, we were so worried that our torties might not be getting enough UVB rays as they begin to look kind of pale and inactive. Now, loti just look a shade lighter than guilingao, happily basking at the top of the drift wood and swimming all over the 2 ft tank. Our torties are so mega hang fook, I tell you. The other day Dahbriukay was telling me about this tv program that documents extravagant birthday parties that parents throw for their precious little babies, with ferris wheel and all. Seeing how Dahbriukay pampers our torties, I told him he better not let me see him do such a thing to his future daughter. All he could say was that he’d try not to.

Aie…

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See, Loti even got a work out area to do push ups. My torty is so macho. Definitely can protect mommy from bad guys. Tell me torty, are you actually, an avatar of….. RAPHAEL?? Where are your daggers?

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If you are, then would you mind explaining the havoc you created last night?! Messed up the whole aquarium!! If it wasn’t for the bridge supporting the driftwood, you both would be as good as guilinggou…dead!

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Loti swimming with the bubbles, oblivious to the havoc he created.

Somehow I just think that they missed their daddy quite a bit. Loti been swinging on both ends ever since the move to my place. Sometimes manic, sometimes depressive. Heck, he even tried asphxiating himself with cling wrap and seemed to like it quite a bit!

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Minbao, on the other hand, had became a social recluse. Always hiding under bridges, latching on the drift wood…and basking under water.

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Minbao, assuming the basking position under water.

She is clearly, deranged.