When a turtle and a moving car collide, you don’t expect the outcome to be pretty. But thanks to the quick thinking of an Israeli veterinarian and a nail tech, one lucky turtle will live to see another day. It all started last November when nail tech Shiri Keinan, owner of Shiri Nails and Beauty Salon, received an urgent phone call from her local vet, Dr. Ziv Dikman. Dr. Dikman explained that a 12-year-old turtle had been run over by a car and its shell was badly crushed in several places. “Dr. Dikman knew I deal with all kinds of glues and acrylics and brilliantly thought I might be helpful saving the turtle,” explains Keinan. At first she offered the vet nail glue to help repair the broken portions of shell, but then she thought, why not try NSI acrylic? “I remembered reading an article about a nail technician who once helped a parrot by repairing his broken beak using acrylics,” she says. She took her NSI Attraction acrylic liquid and powder, a brush, and nail forms and headed over to the vet.

When Keinan arrived at Dr. Dikman’s practice the sight was heart-breaking. The small turtle had a large piece of shell completely missing and you could actually see its lung. “This poor turtle was a mess,” she says. “For the first time in my life I heard a turtle crying.”

She immediately jumped into action. She couldn’t use a nail primer because of the danger to the turtle’s exposed organ so she built an acrylic patch on a nail form to cover the area missing the shell. “I didn’t wait for it to dry fully so I was able to bend it to the right angle,” she explains. She attached the acrylic patch to the turtle shell using glue and fast-drying spray, then filled in all the other cracks on the shell and even on the belly with acrylic.

In all, Keinan and Dr. Dikman worked on the turtle for 45 minutes. “The whole time I was thinking how my mom would be proud now that I was finally able to fulfill my childhood dream to become a vet,” she says. “This is a real life Ninja Turtle. I think he now has the best shield in the world!”

The turtle was given antibiotics and a day later was doing much better. Keinan hopes with her help, the turtle will make a full recovery.

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