Hrm.

So we have a (temporary) houseguest.

It is a turtle.

He swam into my backyard (...they over-water, at these places) from under a neighbor's fence, and he doesn't belong to that neighbor. Or the neighbor on the other side, or to anyone the manager of our complex knows of, or to the neighbor beyond the neighbor on the other side, or to the man I yelled to from my upstairs window who was in the yard of the house behind the neighbor whose fence he swam under, or the other people who answered their doors when I knocked. (This turtle is helping to socialize me.) My bets are currently on the people behind *our* place, whose fence overlaps a little with next door, and who frequently neglect animals in their backyard, but I haven't seen them out to call down and I'm not sure from the street which house is theirs. And I'm not sure I want to go hand it to them if they don't call and ask, considering how poorly everything else I've seen back there tends to look.

So I've posted on Craigslist and put up a few signs on the blocks of mailboxes for our complex and for the street behind, and we're hoping. And in the meantime, one of my neighbors very sweetly let me borrow an aquarium tank, and after some research I'm doing what meagre I can to make him a little basking dock considering I have no driftwood and no large rocks, though so far he's a little too freaked out to come out of the water onto it. He's in a warm room.

Spinach and cherries is what I have that I can think of to feed him, so far.

Of all the myriad critters I have impromptu cared for before or had in the menagerie we called our house growing up, I have never, ever had a turtle. Or known anyone who had a turtle.

Sooo. Anyone know some home-grown temporary care tips for a Red-Eared Slider Turtle?