It was raining again. 

There was no sight of any street vendors or the colorful plastic prisons that usually accompanied them. It was the third week in a row that I had tried and failed to find any turtle vendors. So after another wasted Sunday afternoon, I ended up heading home with empty hands. The glass tank that I had so painstakingly cleaned out a month before was still sitting empty and alone in the living room. I looked into the water and tapped on the glass. The rocks looked sadder than usual. 

But maybe it was better if that tank stayed empty. To tell the truth, I've had a poor track record with keeping pets. The evidence was plain in that none of them are still around for me to accidentally mistreat. The losses of previous pets had been devastating enough, but it was the death of my betta fish, Fifi, that ended up being the final hit. Her little lifeless body floating around the top of the tank had been scarring enough for seven-year-old me to put any hopes of keeping another pet on hold for, what seemed at the time, the rest of eternity. 

But after unearthing a dusty tank during spring cleaning, I found it in me to try again. After all, it had been almost eight years since Fifi. I was grown now, and definitely over my many inexcusable failures as a child; how hard could it be for a perfectly responsible person like me to take care of something as low maintenance as a turtle? So I spent the good half of a Saturday evening spraying the tank clean with the garden hose and spending more than enough money on neon substrate and aquatic plants. The tank was looking fairly lively already; all it was missing was the ones that would call it home. 

This was the big problem of course; it seemed like the market demand for turtle vendors was on the decline. After weeks of no success, it looked as if the only things that would ever live in that tank were going to be Gerald the java fern and his many equally silent friends. Needless to say, I was more than a little disheartened. But, by a set of extremely unlikely but lucky circumstances, I found myself in possession of the turtles I had hoped for. And to this very day, I hail my cousin as the savior. 

hey, the first text read. you said you wanted to get turtles?

yea, I replied. But i couldn't find any for sale.

oh, you interested in mine? i  cant keep em anymore ‘cause of a job and im leaning towards giving them away like 75%

I remember feeling my heart leap into my throat as I texted back a reply. 

yes!! definitely, we’re totally open

And just a week later, I found myself happily carrying home a plastic container filled with two disgruntled turtles and a goldfish. I thought it was going to be fairly easy: all I had to do was feed Lucy and Lacy and clean the filter once a month.

But settling into the tank was more of an event that I had thought. The second I lowered the turtles into the tank, the plants' fates were sealed. The first thing the little heathens decided to do in their new home was to eat the first thing they saw. 

Gerald had been the first to go.

But even after a straight twenty minutes of cold-blooded murder, I suppose the plants’ honorable sacrifices hadn't been enough, because the second I turned my back, Lucy and Lacy had started to eat the rocks in one of the tank corners. They looked up at me with their little beady eyes and knocked against the tank. Any pity I had for them and their lackluster names instantly vanished in the face of their audacity.

And soon after the turtles moved in, another dollar was added to the tank. Their names were 黎明 (dawn), 黄昏 (dusk), and 十一子 (little twelve); each 30 cents (plus tax) and thankfully too large for Lucy and Lacy to eat. It seemed like my little tank family was finally complete. But to this day, I still feel as if I’m not cut out for the job of pet owner; that the next time I check on them I’ll find corpses instead of healthy turtles and fish. But looking at them and seeing them lively and decidedly not dead, I let myself bully someone else for a change. 

I frequently monitor them in my downtime; watching Lucy chase around 十一子 and Lacy chew on another pebble larger than her head.

“You’re both so dumb.”

In the back corner, Lacy coughed up another piece of substrate.