Losing Scutes

I lost my first scute! It’s kind of like losing your first tooth, or shedding your first layer of skin. Although, I am unsure how well you may relate to the latter. Speaking of however, I am shedding my skin too. While that is not nearly as fun to speak of, it deserves mentioning… Because, all of this means I am growing up! Yay! My mother seems to think that I have outgrown the life stages which are most sensitive to my health, as a young hatchling. There should not be much worry going forward for her because I am a healthy and happy turtle. Anyway, back to the topic of my scutes. This is important. Really important. If you’ll remember my mentioning so before, scutes are sort of like the bark on a tree. Each year, I will grow larger and my scutes will fall off. It is currently assumed (without further research) that by the time I lose the last of this current layer of scutes, I will be approximately one year old. And so it will be so forth in each coming year as I grow older. The presumably inaccurate nature of this statement is only due to inadequate findings in research done thus far. It is in fact true that turtles will lose their scutes and thus the turtle has grown a year older. However, it is not necessarily true that should one find a turtle in the wild, to count the rings of the shell will not surely indicate the age of the reptile. In captivity, this is all a bit easier to monitor. Obviously, I am not yet a year old and I have lost my first scute. I will assume that I will lose the rest of this youngling skin by the time I do turn one year old, whereupon a ring will appear within each scute, indicating that I am approximately of the age as would be figured. Nonetheless, this is all such a very big deal. More so to my mother than for me. For me, its like shedding skin. Which is exactly what its like for you, shedding skin that is. You do it every day and you don’t even really know it and if you do, you shouldn’t really care too much. My mother on the other hand takes it with a more celebratory notion. All I wanna know is if there is a Scute Fairy. I hope she doesn’t leave me money though - I wouldn’t have any use for it. I want some mealwoms!