Slow-Mo Joe, the tortoise (and our cricket stowaway)

Well, our new class pet is hunkered down in his new terrarium.  We made it to Pet Expo and back with no problems.  Only two 6th graders didn't accompany us.  One was visiting a grandparent, and hadn't been in school today.  The other just decided he didn't want to come.

The first thing we did when we arrived at the pet store was to look at all the other animals.  Then we picked out some food/water dishes (the food dish we picked out is pretty big, so I'm thinking we might go down to a smaller one... we'll see).  Finally we picked out our tortoise.  The lady who got him out of the pen said it was probably a boy because of the way he was holding his tail.  Everyone wanted to get a boy, so that's the one we picked.  I remember reading that the males are slightly concave on the bottom, and this one is not, but that could be because it is still small and hasn't finished developing.

Here's what our terrarium currently looks like:

Our little guy dug himself a hole under this green thing and is just sitting there.  Thank goodness it's the weekend; that will give him a little time to get situated before noisy kids start bugging him.  I'll probably stop in at school tomorrow to check in on him and see if he ate any lettuce.

We had a surprise stowaway in the box we brought our tortoise in.  The girls were taking turns holding the box and one shouted, "Ahh! The turtle pooped!"  It turns out it was just a cricket that had sneaked a ride.  We tossed the cricket in the terrarium so our little buddy has some company.  Since we were missing two 6th graders, we decided to wait until Monday to officially name our new pet.  The 6th grade boy that came with said we should name him Fat Joe, or Slow-Mo since turtles/tortoises move slowly.  The girls wanted to name it Joe too, or Bobert or a few other names I can't think of right now.  I think we're going to go with Slow Mo Joe, and call him Joe for short, or maybe MoJo.  That name seems to meet everyone's approval.

All day I've been researching (in between teaching) what to feed a tortoise, how to care for it, etc.  I don't want our money to go to waste!  Most sites say to have your tortoise checked out by a vet, but I don't know if the vets in this area would know what to do with a tortoise.  You're supposed to take a fecal sample and have it checked for parasites.  Then I found a website that gives you instructions on how to search for worm eggs yourself... possible 7th and 8th grade science lab?  Hmm, if only we had better microscopes.  Maybe at the end of the year we'll test it out.  I do kind of think I should deworm our new pet, just in case.  They say to use Panacur, so I'll have to stop at the vet's office at some point and see if I can get a hold of some.