After nearly 7 years with Franklin, despite feeding on terra cotta saucers his beak continued to grow, possibly because he likes to drag his food everywhere to eat it. I’ve tried various times to file down the beak, but always worried I’d hurt him when I did the head catch between the fingers because he’d pull back so hard until his eyes got puffy. But it finally got to the point where I’m beyond emarassed it got that far, so I reached out to the vet I’ve been too before and they aren’t taking in new clients (I guess after 6 years I’m no longer a current one) they referred me to another who’s actually closer (we have very few exotic vets here) so I got some basic info and how much it would ring me up bill wise... but they told me he would HAVE to be sedated. And I’m not comfortable with that one bit, looked it up here and there was only one thread on it, and the veteran keepers seemed to agree with my already negative idea of it. So, this morning I put on my big girl pants and went to work, my little nail dremal was dead and I couldn’t fix it so I tried a nail file for all of 2 seconds, before deciding a nail clipper although terrifying would be the best bet. Franklin popped all over himself (and me), put up a good fight, I now know for a fact he’s a boy because at one point he tried flashing me to get rid of me so now that I’ve actually seen his tortoise bits I know without a doubt he’s male, but we finally made some huge progress. It’s kinda choppy and it’s not perfect but it looks soooo much better and should be way easier for him to eat... even though he’s decided my romain peace offering deserved to be pooped on (funny because I’m my before picture he was munching on a peace offering after I made him sit in the empty bathtub for close to an hour while I changed all his substrate out.
He just looked out his tank at me sitting next to him on the couch as if to say “thank you”
He just looked out his tank at me sitting next to him on the couch as if to say “thank you”