Paging the Annie Sullivan of painted turtles

On my recent outing to my local wetlands, I harvested two small egg masses in hopes that Cashew will gobble them up. Apparently easier said then done. I wish I could communicate somehow to Cashew to let it know that those egg masses are food. Cashew expressed no interest whatsoever. Not even a sniff at them. I left for a couple hours and checked back on the situation. Still no change. A couple days passed and the eggs were growing and I was worried that the eggs would hatch and I would be inundated with hundreds of salamander and frog larvae and tadpoles. So I scooped them back up and returned them to their original locations. A few frog eggs were left over and the eggs have been growing. Perhaps by tomorrow I'll have a handful of microscopic tadpoles. Maybe that'll be more of Cashew's liking. I read in one of my field guides that painted turtlets like crustaceans and insects. Sigh. Next menu choice will be some live fairy shrimp....if I can find some.

Then today on the advice of a co-worker I got more fish. Three to be exact. I put them all in a tupperware with just a little bit of water. Cashew spent 90% of the time trying to scratch it's way out and 10% of the time just staring at me. So everyone got dumped into the fish tank. Hopefully Cashew will broaden its menu of food.