We Got a Tortoise! ... and the Flu

Bubba Tuck, basking under the heat lamp,
sitting on top of his food.

With parents in Hawaii without us, we are enjoying our new pet tortoise and a flu bug.  For Christmas, instead of iPods or other fancy works of technology my little bro Chance asked for a turtle. He researched turtles for sale on ksl.com and found our very own Russian Tortoise!  After many heated debates, we came up with the name Tuck Bubbles Carr- I call him Bubba Tuck. (My vote was for Cobra Bubbles, Jon's was Tuck Furgeson and Chance came up with Tuck Bubbles) Soon after we had this wonderful reptilian addition to our house, we found out that tortoises and turtles can carry disease on their shells without being affected by it. We think Chance and Javi could have contracted the flu from holding Tuck and not washing their hands afterward. However, Chance insists that they could have gotten it from anywhere and we CANNOT blame the tortoise for illness. That was last week, but now we have two awesome Grandparent babysitters watching us; one of which has been down with a similar looking flu bug. I only hope that the rest of us can hold out without getting sick, at least until we're well into the new school term.