An Absolute Near Death Experience!!!

   Jesus fucking wept! I'm So Lucky to be sitting here, typing this! This morning, I nearly managed to pull off a double killing. Me being one of them.

  Ye know me, I like to tell ye the whole story. But, this is a story from within a story. So, excuse me if I make it a bit more condensed on the exact details. They're for another story.

  Snape. My beloved Common Snapping Turtle. Got him in January 2017. He was about the size of a Half Crown. Bought him an 18" x 12" fish tank and he was lost in it.

  Now? Bastard's got a roughly 10" x 10" shell alone and weighs a fucking ton! As I found out yesterday, when I had to lift his plastic box.

  So, he's gone through a few, ever growing, enclosures over the years. Now though, I'm actually working on the physical side of 'building' his Big enclosure.

  Basically, I'm sectioning off a corner of the room and shall 'furnish' a cut down IBC water tank for him.

  That's why this whole room is in disarray. My mind's fried. And the Dogs are Not Happy. 

   Snape's as happy as he can be though. He's still in his usual box. With his heater and filter. Me netting out anything visible which the filter misses. Changing out a couple of litres a day, religiously.

  And, he's always my first port of call, when I get up. The Dogs jump up and leap around. Snape lives in an opaque plastic box of water. I need to physically lift the lid and visually check he's okay in there.

  And this morning was no exception. Got up. Let the Dogs out. Kettle on. Come in here and look at Snape.

  Okay. He'd evacuated what was left in his bowels, after a fucking good sort out the other day. Water was a bit murky. I'd get my little fine meshed net to work and clean his filter.

  It's what's called a " Cannister " filter. Lives inside the tank. Fully submersed. Snape's is one of the biggest they do. Probably about 10" x 3"?

  What ever. I have it laying, rather than standing in his box. Because the water's not deep enough. 

 And, living in a world with just two other objects, one of which disturbs the water? I guess it attracts Snape's attention and he likes to 'play with it'.

  He actually shoves himself beneath it, so it's resting on his back. But, this lifts the intake end out of the water. So the motor is left sucking air, at the other end.

  To combat this, I've learned to drape the flex over the rim of the tank, pull it so the heavier, motor end, is lifted just so, just below the surface of the water. Thus keeping the bottom end submerged.

 And, I keep the flex in place, jammed under a heavy brick beside the tank. Have done for a year or more. Works.

  So, today I get up. Dogs out. Kettle on. Come back in here to check on Snape.

  There he is, playing with his filter, again. He's got it, basically, balanced across his' shoulders'. Like a weight lifter. I saw that.

   And, in the next nano second, my barely awake mind also noted the filter wasn't sucking and spurgling, as it would normally do when he lifts the motor end out of the water.

  But, the motor end Was in the water. There was barely a quarter inch of the casing out of the water.

  And, there was the black flex that fed into the motor casing at exactly that spot. And there was the blue wire, which should have been encased in that flex. 

  And there was the brown wire. And I could see the copper at the end of the brown wire, which shouldn't have been ending.

  And a little pillar of smoke was snaking up from it. And I was dimly aware of a sizzling sound. And that I'd just disgraced myself .....

  If Snape had just relaxed his muscles, as I've just let my own shoulders drop in relaxation, after remembering that Horror.

  If I'd functioned on thought, rather than absolute, instinctive, muscle brain reaction? 

Another fraction of a split second, and Snape could have relaxed. That Live wire would have submerged. I'd have grabbed at the filter. Plunging my hand into the water.

  I was a fraction of a split second faster. We live.