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When you come back to reality after a vacation, there’s stuff to do. Sometimes your lawn is overgrown, or the gutters need to be cleared or the plants watered. Other times you have to give CPR to a baby turtle that is, by all outward appearances, quite dead.
Pavel Lubanski, a 30-year-old Shopify employee, expected the former but, in one of life’s great twists, ended up doing the latter.
On May 19, after a week on a Caribbean cruise, Lubanski came home to find Bowser, his 10-month-old red-eared slider turtle, stuck under a piece of the aquarium. “I picked it up and she was just dangling from it,” Lubanski said. “I’m not sure how long she was under for, but her eyes were closed, she went slack. She was completely lifeless. I started crying right a way. I knew she’d drowned.”
Amphibians and reptiles have a more flirtatious relationship with death, however. “I knew that reptiles and amphibians, they were a bit weird and could come back to life,” he said. “I knew she’d drowned, so I put my mouth on her little face and I just started blowing into it.”
Lubanski’s Hasselhoff-esque rescue operation, somewhat miraculously, actually worked: “I think within 10 minutes of blowing into it, her back leg gave a kick, and she opened her mouth and water started coming out.”
It is worth noting that this act of chelonian heroism was not without risk: Red-eared slider turtles can carry and infect humans with salmonella. A more immediate concern might be that it’s just kind of gross: Lubanski describes the taste of a turtle as being “like pond water.”
There is, arguably, something unique about pets and the emotional resonance they have with us. When they bring us moments of trepidation, humans can lose track of themselves, letting down their their steely exteriors to publicly reveal the shape of their own hearts.
“Bowser” is reportedly doing fine after being brought back from the dead.
For Lubanski, this happened in the back of an Uber as he rushed his turtle to hospital.
“I wonder what the Uber driver thought,” he joked. “I was crying the whole time, I’m trying to keep composed — I’m a 30-year-old man. Tears are streaming down my face, and I’m holding a small baby turtle. He probably thought I found it in the forest or something.”
It was an emotionally charged moment for Lubanski: over the past two years, he’d lost three other beloved family pets — his Yorkshire terrier Wicca, and his two cats Tuna and Sushi. (All died, more or less, of old age.) He wanted another pet, but a busy schedule and small living quarters made a dog or cat seem impractical. “I wanted an animal with a consciousness, something I could maybe hold and play with a bit.”
Turtles are not soft, nor especially friendly, in the way cats or dogs are; they are alien, prehistoric creatures whose main similarity to humans is that, in Lubanski’s words, “they go wild when I’m about to feed them.”
Lubanski loves them anyway, in a way that may not translate to anyone who has never owned a turtle. “I’m really close with my turtles,” he said. He acknowledges, though, that the love he gives to his turtles is not always returned. “I give my turtle nose kisses,” he said. “That’s the only affection I get.”
Turtles may be slow-moving animals, seeming to have nothing but time — but at that moment Lubanski and Bowser arrived at the vet’s office, time was very much of the essence. “On presentation, Bowser was found to be unresponsive with very little movement,” reads Bowser’s patient chart (obtained exclusively by this newspaper). “Breathing was not laboured but slow. Her eyes were closed.”
In a medical procedure that must’ve been fit for a primetime drama, doctors at the Ottawa Animal Emergency & Specialty Hospital brought Bowser back from the brink, walking her back from the light at the end of the tunnel. (Very slowly, one imagines; Bowser is still a turtle, after all.) “Given time, Bowser responded very well to oxygen therapy, and the issue appeared to resolve.”
Turtles may not be quite as cute and cuddly as dogs or cats, but Pavel Lubanski loves Bowser, above, and Raphael anyway.
By then, it had become a family affair: Lubanski had gone home to pick up Raphael, Bowser’s turtle brother, who by this point was surely wondering where his sister had disappeared to, for a reunion. (The moment, caught on tape, is unremarkable; turtles, it seems, are not very emotive creatures.) “I figured she’d be more comfortable coming home with big brother,” Lubanski said.
Bowser is now recovering well, Lubanski said. The offending aquarium feature — a model Egyptian pyramid — has been removed.
“She’s back to normal. I can’t believe it. I thought she’d maybe have some damage, but she seems fine.”
And though Raphael had shown an aggressive streak in the past — he often liked to bite at Bowser, Lubanski said —foul play is not suspected.
查看原文...
Pavel Lubanski, a 30-year-old Shopify employee, expected the former but, in one of life’s great twists, ended up doing the latter.
On May 19, after a week on a Caribbean cruise, Lubanski came home to find Bowser, his 10-month-old red-eared slider turtle, stuck under a piece of the aquarium. “I picked it up and she was just dangling from it,” Lubanski said. “I’m not sure how long she was under for, but her eyes were closed, she went slack. She was completely lifeless. I started crying right a way. I knew she’d drowned.”
Amphibians and reptiles have a more flirtatious relationship with death, however. “I knew that reptiles and amphibians, they were a bit weird and could come back to life,” he said. “I knew she’d drowned, so I put my mouth on her little face and I just started blowing into it.”
Lubanski’s Hasselhoff-esque rescue operation, somewhat miraculously, actually worked: “I think within 10 minutes of blowing into it, her back leg gave a kick, and she opened her mouth and water started coming out.”
It is worth noting that this act of chelonian heroism was not without risk: Red-eared slider turtles can carry and infect humans with salmonella. A more immediate concern might be that it’s just kind of gross: Lubanski describes the taste of a turtle as being “like pond water.”
There is, arguably, something unique about pets and the emotional resonance they have with us. When they bring us moments of trepidation, humans can lose track of themselves, letting down their their steely exteriors to publicly reveal the shape of their own hearts.
“Bowser” is reportedly doing fine after being brought back from the dead.
For Lubanski, this happened in the back of an Uber as he rushed his turtle to hospital.
“I wonder what the Uber driver thought,” he joked. “I was crying the whole time, I’m trying to keep composed — I’m a 30-year-old man. Tears are streaming down my face, and I’m holding a small baby turtle. He probably thought I found it in the forest or something.”
It was an emotionally charged moment for Lubanski: over the past two years, he’d lost three other beloved family pets — his Yorkshire terrier Wicca, and his two cats Tuna and Sushi. (All died, more or less, of old age.) He wanted another pet, but a busy schedule and small living quarters made a dog or cat seem impractical. “I wanted an animal with a consciousness, something I could maybe hold and play with a bit.”
Turtles are not soft, nor especially friendly, in the way cats or dogs are; they are alien, prehistoric creatures whose main similarity to humans is that, in Lubanski’s words, “they go wild when I’m about to feed them.”
Lubanski loves them anyway, in a way that may not translate to anyone who has never owned a turtle. “I’m really close with my turtles,” he said. He acknowledges, though, that the love he gives to his turtles is not always returned. “I give my turtle nose kisses,” he said. “That’s the only affection I get.”
Turtles may be slow-moving animals, seeming to have nothing but time — but at that moment Lubanski and Bowser arrived at the vet’s office, time was very much of the essence. “On presentation, Bowser was found to be unresponsive with very little movement,” reads Bowser’s patient chart (obtained exclusively by this newspaper). “Breathing was not laboured but slow. Her eyes were closed.”
In a medical procedure that must’ve been fit for a primetime drama, doctors at the Ottawa Animal Emergency & Specialty Hospital brought Bowser back from the brink, walking her back from the light at the end of the tunnel. (Very slowly, one imagines; Bowser is still a turtle, after all.) “Given time, Bowser responded very well to oxygen therapy, and the issue appeared to resolve.”
Turtles may not be quite as cute and cuddly as dogs or cats, but Pavel Lubanski loves Bowser, above, and Raphael anyway.
By then, it had become a family affair: Lubanski had gone home to pick up Raphael, Bowser’s turtle brother, who by this point was surely wondering where his sister had disappeared to, for a reunion. (The moment, caught on tape, is unremarkable; turtles, it seems, are not very emotive creatures.) “I figured she’d be more comfortable coming home with big brother,” Lubanski said.
Bowser is now recovering well, Lubanski said. The offending aquarium feature — a model Egyptian pyramid — has been removed.
“She’s back to normal. I can’t believe it. I thought she’d maybe have some damage, but she seems fine.”
And though Raphael had shown an aggressive streak in the past — he often liked to bite at Bowser, Lubanski said —foul play is not suspected.
查看原文...
