I learned a new word today and it's called "scutes." We've all seen scutes before, but we didn't know exactly what to call them. They're the small panels that our turtle Natasha wears to form the outer layer of her shell:

Turtle scutes have two things in common with human hair and nails.  One is that they are all primarily made up of keratin, a fibrous protein. The other commonality is that you don't want to find any of these items in your Moo Shi Chicken at a Chinese restaurant. Scutes are pretty gross, so let's try to think of them as presented in this image: 

I'm assuming that Natasha has scutes on her plastron but she's too modest to let us see what's going on beneath her bridge. 

When your turtle starts shedding scutes, it means that her shell is expanding with the rest of her body. In other words, Natasha is growing, which happened as soon as certain family members bought her a larger tank against my wishes. Natasha's shell, which she calls a "carapace" because it sounds more tony, has grown an inch longer since we bought the 20 gallon aquarium in March. All of this is getting under my skin, which I call an epidermis because is sounds more intellectual. 

But despite my protests, I think some people in my family secretly want Natasha to realize her full growth potential, which would require an unsightly 90 gallon tank. Someone carelessly left the website for the Tilda Swinton Aquaspan 90 up on the family computer. I see where this is heading.