In late January I received an e-mail from a couple who were moving house and could not take pets with them. They asked if we could re-home their Australian snaked neck turtle. As luck would have it my youngest teen had been bugging me for over a year to have a turtle and even got us to go , one very cold winter morning, somewhere in the deepest darkest countryside to visit a turtle rescue centre.

Need less to say I had a very good knowledge of turtles as I was given a new piece of information each day about how they need to be kept etc, in the vague hope I would give in and find one for her.

I had seen lots of turtles by this stage but even I was somewhat taken aback when Victor arrived in a washing up bowl, his owner clad in the thickest rubber gloves and handling the bowl like a pile of unstable gelignite . The reason she felt she needed to wear the gloves, I am assuming, is that all turtles carry salmonella bacteria on their shells and she was taking precautions against him diving out of the bowl and deliberately depositing said microbe on her hands.

I must admit that when I first saw him, the only descriptive word I could utter was UGLY. He really didn't tug at my heartstrings and endear himself to me with a huge long wrinkled neck and a horny chin, but as the days passed he really did become one of the family.

Victor came with a tank. There is no polite way to describe it apart from “totally rank”, a descriptive summing up from one of my offspring. It took 4 hours to clean, which included a quick trip to pets at home as the filter was in 12 pieces and should have only ever disassembled into 6. New filter and heater (don’t ask) later, and much elbow grease, our newest foster animal, now renamed Squirt was happily settled into his tank.

Everyone thought he was fab. Every visitor for the next two months stood in front of his tank and just watched him. He may not be the most attractive turtle, but he was fascinating. He would follow you as you moved around the room, totally wreck the tank by moving the heater and pump, just to amuse passers by and his star turn was having people watch as we fed him, with chopsticks! (Having got accustomed to having five fingers on each hand this seemed the best method to avoid losing the end of one).

A happy ending for Squirt was a new home, a huge tank and lots of attention from the family who fell in love with him the first time they saw him. He is now a much loved and cosseted pet and will hopefully live to a grand old age.