Introductions, Orbees, and Mushrooms, please?.

This is supposed to be an introduction. But we'll see if this blog's human author will keep it as that, or if she gets side-tracked and wanders off rambling about various things.
This blog will not be about the author, but about the author's dog and tortoise (hence the name of the blog!). :)

Ok, so...The Dog. The Dog is Ella. Ella is an adopted American Pit Bull Terrier (well, she's an APBT in behavior and looks, but we cannot say with 100% certainty that is she APBT, but she's a pit bull, at any rate). She's approximately 6 years old.
Throughout the life of this blog, you will read about her funnies, her life, and probably a bunch of other stuff. Yes.
Here's Ella:



Wait, that's Ella, but that's not really Ella.
Let's try this again. Here's Ella:


98% of the time Ella can be found with an Orbee in her mouth (the other 2% of the time she is either begging for food, or she is curled up in a pit ball on our new bed-sorry-HER new bed).
Ella sez, "OH HAI!!! Orbeez, plz? Kthnx."


On to The Tortoise. The tortoise is Stagger Lee, or sometimes he's known as "Stagger Lee teh Tortimus", "Stagger Lee teh Mofo", "Stagger Lee Pee-Wee", and so-on and so-on.
Stagger Lee is a redfoot tortoise. He is about 15 months old with a hatch date of January 16th, 2009.
I never thought I'd own a tortoise. I remember when I first fell in love with tortoises. It was when I was 8 years old, and I used to be OBSESSED with "The Neverending Story".
Morla The Ancient One always intrigued me. She's awesome.
Anyway, so, ever since I have wanted a tortoise.
I acquired Stagger Lee in June of '09. He came to me not much bigger than a half dollar.
In fact, here's the first day he arrived:


ohmygoodness. Was he not the cutest thing, EVER????
With his old man wise face. OH TEH CUTENESS. I can hardly stand it now looking at these pictures!

Anyway, Stagger is the reptile ruler of the roost around here. He lives in an enclosure in my bedroom for now. My husband is building him his own tortoise table/big boy enclosure within the next few weeks/months.
We keep him in moss. He's a madman, though, I tell ya. Do NOT let that adorable, wise-looking tortoise face fool you. He will hiss at you.
But he's really just a big sissy. Seriously. He sucks right into his shell whenever I try to feed him meal worms or roaches. I have to coax him for about 20 minutes before he'll eat them off of food grippers. Silly tortoise.

Stagger Lee sez, "U haz teh mushroomz, plz?"