Dali was doing her excited bark while on her early morning pee this morning in the back yard. It’s different in tone and intensity from her “barking at the neighbor who’s trying to water her flowers” bark or her “barking at the neighbor who is hosing blood off his tuba” bark. I was trying to wait until the coffee was ready before putting on shoes to go see what she was yelling about, but I started to worry it might be something cute, fuzzy and little that she would end up trying to eat. So I hustled on out there and found this guy:

He’s not fuzzy, but he was sort of cute. And pretty big, as far as turtles that show up in your backyard in Houston go. He reminded me of a turtle – Tohner named him “Mr. TuTu” – that used to show up every summer when we were kids. We knew it was the same turtle year after year because he had an X or t marking on his back. Mr. TuTu would hang out for a while and then move on to wherever he was the rest of the year. Perhaps he was orbiting something and like a comet showed up in our front yard every summer.

[I’m happy to report that the black water in the neighbor’s pool has been drained – according to the neighbor there was an issue with the pool that they didn’t want to bother with during the winter. I think the “issue” may have been related to the body parts he stores in there, maybe the hair clogged a drain or something, but I didn’t suggest that as a possibility.]