animal departure

tomorrow we will be releasing our turtle, jasper, into a nearby pond, so that he'll finally be able to play with other animals and swim in a body of water that's more than 1.5 times his circumference and eat unprocessed foods and hopefully grow proportionally larger. it will be very difficult to have to empty out his little corner of the living room, but he's been debilitatingly sad for the past few months, and so we think it's in his best interest. he must feel so restless in our apartment, without anything to do but wait for feeding time and try to understand what it means when we watch television.

i especially like this blurry photograph of him, in which his tiny turtle head looks like some kind of gem, washing up on a grassy riverbank.