A new home for Molly McButterPants

This weekend was a big weekend for our pet turtle Molly. Yes her name is Molly McButterPants. She is our 2 year old Red Eared Slider. Over the course of 2 years Molly has grown to be a lot larger than we ever expected. She went from a 29 gallon indoor fish tank to a 110 gallon pond in just under two years.

In the scope of things we felt like building Molly's new habitat was a top priority and a quality of life issue for her. Since moving to the outdoors Molly hanging out in large Rubbermaid container with a filter. These were not ideal conditions but we knew it was a temporary fix for our massive turtle. Enough about Molly on to the pond!

The morning started off at about 7:30 a.m. at our local Home Depot store. We grabbed a pre-formed pond and headed home to deal with the deed at hand. When we moved in to our house there was this slab with rocks and wood. We assumed it was for a hot tub. Well we really aren't hot tub people so this seemed to be the perfect spot for Molly.

After a lot of shoveling rock and getting ride of the wood frame we finally hit actual ground. The natural next step was to figure out how we wanted the pond situated and to start digging. We ended up sinking the pond in the ground about a foot or so. Once it was perfectly into the ground we were off to Home Depot again!

We had to make trip number two to pick up the cement blocks. I'm sure they have a proper name but I'm just going to say the heavy cement blocks. We loaded up 20 blocks and headed back home knowing that as much as we did not want to we had to do a 3rd trip to Depot. Did I mention that we are lucky enough to have a Home Depot RIGHT around the corner? So like I was saying we headed back for a 3rd time to good ol' Home Depot. All in all we needed about 40 blocks to get the look we wanted.

After our shape was fixed we had to support the blocks and pond with the dirt we had pulled out. So, back in the dirt went.

Mario found a great use for the flag stone we had been tearing up in the yard. He put some stones into the ground surrounding the pond. Once the winter passes and we clean them up they will be a lot more visible. We filled up the pond, de-chlorinated the water and let it circulate for awhile.

Next came Mario's favorite the fencing (not really it was a big pain in the butt). One might ask "why the fencing" well folks our turtle is like most other turtles an escape artist. She has the option of land but not the option of running away. Good thing Mario had the brute force to get those suckers in the ground!

At around 6:30 p.m. we grabbed up Molly and let her check out her new home, while The Bubs grabbed a beer. Molly appears to be happy and we love how it looks, so a good situation all around. Now the next step in this project is to get some plants in there. Phew one project down a billion more to go. I couldn't forget the lady of the hour Miss Molly McButterPants!