What about the other five?
You can pry those Amandas from my cold dead hands.
You can
prydig those cold dead Amandas from myhandsbackyard.FTFY
You’re stuck with those red-eared sliders. Nobody wants them. The guy who gave you those was celebrating as you drove away.
Why do nobody like turties?
Turtles are cool, I love them, but red eared sliders are invasive nearly everywhere, and they always end up getting released in the wild, where they mess with local.populations.
More the reason to rescue them when able, to keep them out of that environment. It’s fucked how easy it is to buy them in some places, but it’s illegal in places for reasons you mention.
I ended up with mine because an idiot roommate thought it was a good idea to buy two for his estranged wife as a lunar new years gift. After being shipped twice, I found the surviving one in my sink with a busted eye and a broken digit, so I nursed it back to health and gave it a 55 gallon tank.
That was 10 years ago and without a doubt, that idiot roommate never got back with his estranged wife either.
My weird plug for an exotic pet to impulse purchase: Tarantulas. Specifically a new world (read: America’s mostly) tarantula since they are chill and as a rule mostly harmless. Worst thing that happens (to you) is a bite from a massive fang (ouch) with about a beesting severity of venom (meh) but that shouldn’t happen anyway cus you shouldn’t be handling Ts in general because the worst them and honestly likely thing from interacting with you is fear, pain, or death.
The upsides as a hobby are pretty big. Their food is basically free (crickets), their waste is small and infrequent, they make zero noise have zero smell (both of these are not true of cricket feeders notably), have no real risk of escape and likely wouldn’t even if they could (at least most of mine are scaredy cats), and live for 5-20yrs depending on sex/species.
On top of the fact that the spiders themselves are basically free as far as buying the spider itself is concerned. Spiders lay hundreds of eggs, so the young unsexed individuals are kinda a dime a dozen. Depending on the day, maybe literally (I have gotten some truly crazy marketing emails from invert sellers lol)
My favorite part is that if you have one, it’s like 1% more effort to have more and you will quickly come to realize despite the fact that they are utterly unintelligent that doesn’t stop them from having oddles of personality and inner lives. They are constantly reorganizing their enclosures, moving dirt and decorations around to fit whatever their whims are at the moment just to redo it all the next week. They all have different feeding responses, one of mine hides from crickets until they wander near her hide them lunges, another attacks any movement in their enclosure with massive gusto (and zero, ZERO, grace).
Tl;dr: Tarantulas are genuinely great observational/tank pets. Like fish with 1/1000th the effort, and less dangerous. No one ever hand tens of thousand in home repair bills when their T enclosure broke like a salt water aquarium.
Thanks for the recommendation. Do they eat daily or are they one of those “I eat a shit ton at once and I’m good for a week” kinda guys? I’m out of town a lot and don’t think I’ll find anyone willing to care for em, haha.
They eat somewhere between 1-2 times a week and like once everymonth or so 😅. They are totally fine being completely ignored for up to a week (probably two) and honestly would probably survive WAY longer than that with no ill effect. Once they are settled they basically just keep going as long as their temps are fine (which is to say, if your comfy likely they are too. caveat, I live in New England and we let our house get to low60s which is too cool but 68+ is fine. I use a super low watt ceramic heater to keep their IKEA cube shelves warm enough)
