While dogs remain one of Japan’s favorite pet choices, you can actually get much of the same enjoyment from a pet turtle or tortoise. For example, we’ve seen that with enough patience, you and your shelled friend can enjoy going for walks together. And just like dog owners might one day experience the joy of coming home and finding a litter of puppies, so too can those with a turtle feel blessed when it lays a bunch of adorable little eggs.
As a matter of fact, the latter might even be the better of the two, since turtle eggs are far easier to cook than puppies. What’s that? You say you wouldn’t eat your animal companions’ eggs? Then you’re clearly operating under different thinking than this pet owner in Japan.
Twitter user Narupajin is the proud owner of the Chinese pond turtle, or Reeves’ turtle, seen here. The animal is evidently a female, because on May 14 Narupajin tweeted this photo.
“When I got home, my turtle was laying eggs,” he explains. “I told it ‘I want to take a shower,’ but it just sort of looked at me.”
This actually isn’t the first time Narupajin’s pet has decided to lay a clutch of eggs at the foot of his shower, as it did the same thing a year ago.
▼ The scene last year
Figuring this was going to take some time, Narupajin asked one more time if he could step by to get in the shower, and decided to take the turtle’s stoic look as silent acquiescence.
▼ He even sweetened the deal by throwing in a chin rub.
But while that solved his bathing problem, he still had 11 eggs lying around his apartment. So the next order of business was to gather them all up.
Narupajin seems pretty fond of his turtle, given that the animal is now about 30 years old and he appears to let it freely wander around his home. Still, he doesn’t seem to be looking to expand his turtle stable to a full dozen members. So what do you do with nearly a dozen turtle eggs?
If you’re Narupajin, the answer is simple: The same thing you’d do with chicken eggs.
The bond between the Twitter user and his pet apparently isn’t so strong that he minds eating the animal’s would-be offspring. According to Narupajin, turtle eggs are almost entirely yolk, and their color is a paler shade of yellow than those in chicken eggs.
He also says turtle eggs take longer to prepare. Even after 10 minutes on a high flame, the upper layer of the eggs still appeared runny. Not wanting to let them cook any longer, though, he decided to go ahead and eat the eggs, finding that the centers of their yolks were now powdery with a very mild flavor.
Expectedly, more than a few online commenters were shocked at the pet owner’s unusual meal, since turtle eggs aren’t a common dish in Japan. However, Narupajin says that eating his pet’s eggs has become something of an annual event for him. He even mentioned that he plans eat the remaining eggs tamago kake gohan-style, cracking them raw onto a bowl of rice and letting the heat rising up from the steaming grains flash cook their contents.
Who knows, maybe next year he’ll get lucky and his turtle will lay a batch of double-yolk eggs.
Source: Hamster Sokuho (1, 2), Twitter (1, 2)