Here comes Girlie

My Sunday with Girlie.
 
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Posted via email from prettyedy

I love this video. Newman the 90 pound tortoise and his keeper Tony take regular walks around their Southern California neighborhood.

Oh what a horror. There must be a word that means ironic but isn't so cheery.

Alice, the old box turtle lady, thinks she has created a haven, an oasis, a sanctuary for case-off box turtles. She calls every classified for a box turtle that is no longer wanted. She then adds the poor thing to the others in her collection in her backyard.

We went there yesterday to pick-up a russian tortoise she'd acquired. She invited us to look around her backyard at the turtles. This time of year her backyard is mostly shadow and shade. It is covered with ivy, where I presume the turtles hide. The narrow paths are over grown. Alice uses a walker and can not navigate her yard without difficulty. I think she rarely if ever checks on the turtles. If she did check on them I think it would be with the filter of her ignorance.

Jim found two empty shells almost without looking. The live turtles we saw could not move for the cold. We saw turtles with shell rot and dehydration. One turtle I picked up was so light he seemed hollow. Oh, the irony. She has an electric fence to keep out predators.

We brought Alice the empty shells and the dying turtle. She was shaken and saddened. "This is upsetting", she said. I felt helpless in the face of Alice's well meaning but clueless view of what she is doing. A lonely old woman who wants to do good.

Last night Jim and I both had bad dreams. We both reached the same conclusion, we must contact animal control.

See Tickle walk. This is the little guy we've been nursing back to health. This is my first "movie". I tried youtube first, but it looked terrible. So, I loaded it on vimeo.com and it looks much better. Tickle walking

On Saturday May 27th, Jim made a 900 mile, 12 hour round trip to southern California to pick up a young California Desert tortoise named Tickle. Tickle was in distress and close to dying. Tickle's owner was very concerned and well meaning but she had been given bad advice about diet and habitat for poor Tickle.

This is what Tickle looked like when Jim first brought him home.


Tickle was badly dehydrated, malnourished and vitamin deficient. He could not open his eyes, he could not walk and his shell was (and still is) very soft. We think that when she had hibernated him, he was kept too warm and he was under weight to begin with. On top of all this she said that Tickle was three years old, but he was the size of a yearling. We gave the little guy about a 5 to 10% chance of survival.

To our surprise Tickle responded to care very quickly. The little guy has a strong will to survive.

The first two or three days we soaked him and hand fed him finely cut greens. By the third day he started to fed on his own. After the first week we would take him out once a day for sun (UVB) and a little exercise.

This is what Tickle looks like now.

This picture was taken almost six week after the first one.

Tickle gets outside time every day now in his special habitat. We also feed him greens (dandelion, kale and collard) two or three times a day.

This picture is for scale. He is quite small.

Last month Harriet, the 175 year old sub species of Galápagos tortoise died of heart failure. She was the last of her kind. What a beautiful, delightful girl.

Wikipedia on Harriet


Harriet at her birthday last year.

Jim is driving 12 hours round trip today to bring home a sick little tortoise. I guess the little guy isn't eating and his eyes are puffy. Jim offered to take him when the owner posted to a tortoise Yahoo group that we belong to. She had given up. We'll make an appointment with the vet this week.

I spent the morning getting my hair cut and colored.

When I got home I lay in the hammock in the backyard and read. I listened to the wind in the trees and the sounds of the suburbs.


Update Aug. 22, 2006:
Tickle is looking good

Tortoise birthday http://www.whatsontheplanet.com/wow/ptnr/rci/page.jsp?fx=event&event_id=14769
Found at killbeth's journal - Sep. 23 2005

I am in love. Harriet the Galapagos tortoise, born 1830. Harriet lives in Australia's Crocodile Hunter's Australia Zoo.

From the article:
"The giant tortoise had been brought to Australia by John Wickham - a former English naval office who had been with Darwin in South America - and when Wickham left for France in the 1860s, Harriet took up residence in the Brisbane Botanical Gardens.

Charles Darwin had brought Harriet and two of her sub-species back to England, in 1835, when she was five years old and about the size of a dinner plate. Checking against Darwin's records from 1834, Harriet is a Santiago tortoise (Geochelone nigra darwini). While she still ovulates annually, she hasn't seen another Galapagos tortoise for over 150 years (or more) - and the zoo hasn't been able to trace a male of her subs species. But she's not lonely, as she is a favourite of staff and visitors alike, and simply adores company".

We just got a Sulcata tortoise from a friend of our neighbor. It breaks my heart to see the condition most turtles and tortoises end up when they are bought as "cute little pets" for children. These sweet animals suffer literally in silence.

This make number twelve. Jim says we will care for him and try and adopt him out. That's what he said when he brought home Boris and Natasha last year. (They are russian tortoises). Jim is building a habitat for Natasha now.

Please friends, for the love of what ever you hold dear and sacred, if anyone tells you they are going to buy a turtle or tortoise for a child or teenager try and talk them out of it. Turtles and tortoises have very special habitat and diet needs to be health and happy. They live a very long time and they don't fetch or purr.

Wild populations are being wiped out by the pet trade.

Update Aug. 22, 2006:

Little Guy Oct 1, 2005 - His beak is mis-shapen


Little Guy is looking good. Feb. 2006 He has a great appetite. He is very shy.

This is our russian tortoise Natasha enjoying her favorite treat, guava flowers. Luck for her there were a lot of blossoms on our guava tree this year.

Natasha
Originally uploaded by erinyes.

This is the desktop on my home computer. That is a picture of our california desert tortoise Pie, challenging my camera to a duel.


This is my computer desktop at work. The picture is Blue Morning (1909) by american impressionist George Bellows (1882-1925).