My tortoise escaped

[Lucre]

Ok, I have news for you guys.

It isn’t related with Jeff but I have great news.

The veterinarian of my escaped tortoise called me telling me that an elderly lady came to his studio because her tortoise (we do not know the species yet) gave birth to some little tortoises. She couldn’t take care of the little babies, so she is looking to give them away.

I have a nice garden, so I asked the vet to send me pictures of the babies so that I can choose one or two (max) to give them a better life. I chose to adopt max two because if Jeff is going to show up someday they will need to share the garden.

Since they are babies we cannot define the sex yet, so the main concern is that they end up being males and females. I do not know what to do, but we can place them in separate enclosure to ensure they do not fight or mate. Anyway, they are babies and I don’t think they will fight just yet, so we will have time to think about how to proceed.

I will keep you posted on how the adoption goes.
Hopefully they won’t go Houdini-mode like Jeff, this time.

I am glad I did not throw away the tortoise food

See you guys!
Lucre

[Nina]

Oh my goodness, Lucre, I'm so happy for you! This is such good news, and you are going to give a wonderful home to these two tortoises, and I think they should count themselves lucky that they are coming to live with such a caring owner.

It is fine to leave them together for now, as if they are male and female they won't really start fighting until they start to become sexually mature (well, that's the theory anyway). Sometimes tortoises of the same sex fight when they are first introduced, in order to sort out who will be dominant, but with tortoises from the same litter this might not happen, and in fact I did hear once of a male and female from the same litter who lived together happily for all of their lives.

And when Jeff turns up (and i'm still convinced that he will), he will have some new little friends).

If you can send us a photo of the mother of the tortoises we can tell you the species.

Can't wait to see photos of them -- when will they arrive?

Nina
P.S. I meant to give apologies for not responding to your post of 24th June, but I have only just seen it. For some reason we have been having trouble with the notification system, and I never got a message to say that a new post had been made in this thread.

[Lucre]

Hi Nina!

Yes, don’t worry about anything, it wasn’t that important, I just write so that everybody can follow my story.

The pictures... the vet couldn’t send those because he had to go in surgery right after he called me. Unluckily the vet went home after surgery and he forgot about the pictures...

But when he will be there tomorrow, from the pictures I will chose one (or two, my friend wants to adopt one too, and we both do not know how many torts the vet has left). My friend will pick them up and bring the Little ones when she can, since we do not live that close to each other.

When I will receive news, I will share some picture with you!
Lucre

EDITED:
The vet is going away for vacation time... so until next Monday we won’t have any little tortoises.
I’m sad, because I prepared everything (soil, rocks, water, bath and so on...) but you know vacation is important for docs.

I just hope that he doesn’t give them all away before he turns back. I mean, I wish that every single of the tortoises gets adopted, don’t get me wrong, but I wish I could have my two little torts, you know.

We’ll see.
Lucre

[Lucre]

Update time

Jeff is still missing.
BUT the veterinarian told me he could give me information about the little tortoises that I will adopt.

For now he said that he knows the woman that is giving the little guys away, and she owns Hermanns’.

So on Wednesday I will go to his clinic to check them out.

But yeah, they are Hermanns!
We still do not have the pictures because the veterinarian doesn’t have them with him yet. They are still with the lady.

See you on Wednesday!
Lucre

P.S.: I have a problem. For the vacations the space in the car is limited, so I cannot bring the vivarium in that. I was wondering if a large plastic box (not clear, the plastic would be coloured) is ok for a temporary setup. I didn’t buy that yet, but it would be a big box, like the one you use for storing clothes or something like that.

As I said it would be temporary. I still need alla the pieces for the permanent one (I’m lazy)... that would be made out of wood.

[Nina]

Hi Lucre,
So sad about Jeff, but don't give up hope.

Great news though about the new Hermanns -- I'll bet you're so exited! I was just remembering about your vivarium. As you live in Italy, your climate is much better than ours in England and so the tortoise can be outdoors more, but when the new little tortoise has to be indoors, she really shouldn't be in a vivarium, as they are very bad environments for tortoises.

We have a new thread on this forum from Nikki, who was sold a vivarium and realised it was bad and then converted it into a tortoise table. Here is a link to the thread that has pictures in it. if you don't want to go to the trouble of fitting the new area around the old vivarium, you can always just get a very large open box (like a large dresser drawer) and sit the vivarium with the doors taken off inside that box.
https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/sit ... =11&t=2036

For your vacations, the large plastic box (as big as possible) should be fine, but you will need to put substrate in it (I suppose you could just dig up some soil from wherever you are on vacation and put that in. Will you have lights, water bowl, etc.?

Nina

[Lucre]

Hello Nina!

Yes, I would have those with me... but I thought about this vacation and I feel like it would be very, very stressful for the little tortoises to come with us. They would travel from the clinic to our home, and from there to our vacation house, and the way back. So I honestly feel it’s cruel for them to be adopted before this short two-days vacation.

I feel like they would like to be left alone for some time to settle and bringing them with me it would be an unnecessary stress for the little guys.

So on Wednesday I will call the doc and ask him if he can keep them until next week, so that they won’t have to travel for hours and I can bring them home when I turn back from the vacation.

I just feel like it’s best this way, am I right?

[Nina]

Hi Lucre,

Yes, I think you are absolutely right in not wanting to stress out the new little tortoises, and if your vet is willing to keep them for another week that would be the perfect solution!

Nina

[Teddy28]

Really feel for you! Stay hopeful xx

[Lucre]

Hello there!

So Jeff is still missing...

But I have awesome news! The old lady finally arrived and guess what?
She dropped my two beautiful tortoises to the vet! So today I picked them up.

Now I have an Instagram page made just for the and their story so that I don’t have to take time from this website.

If you are interested in their story, please check the page:
https://www.instagram.com/invites/conta ... nt=i19evlr

Here I will keep you posted on Jeff’s story.

Thank you for our time

[pamela4331]

Hi Lucre, So sorry to hear about Jeff.
I read the whole thread just to know if you ever find the little buddy. I can understand your loss. My sister has a few tiny Tortoises on her lawn. She really cares for both (Tortoises and lawn). Mulch the lawn often, have a small pool for those too. Here is an awesome web resource, which will help to find the right gear for your lawn. An article I could find ( link: https://gearorigin.com/best-mulching-bl ... cub-cadet/ )

[gasdefred]

Hello, Lucre! Has Jeff returned to the family? There have been no updates on Instagram for a long time.

[hujikol]

I hope that Jeff has finally returned and made friends with the new inhabitants of the lawn. How did you end up naming the two babies you took home? We would be glad to see their photos and how they settled in with you.
I also have two turtles, and I'm thinking about getting a third one. However, I am not sure that I will provide everyone with the right care because each animal is individual.
I'm thinking about taking veterinary courses from https://www.veterinaryschoolsu.com/vet- ... -and-cons/ always to provide the right medical care. Do you think this is the right decision? A lot of people say I'm wasting my time.

[Lucre]

Hello there!!

Sadly, Jieff is not around. I still look for him though, especially in the hot spring days like yesterday’s. It was 21 C!

My two tortoises are named Bamboo and Vega!
They are still waking up from brumation and they will be out running in the lawn in just few days. I wanted to make sure that they had enough food in their system and to get acclimatised in the outer enclosure before moving them there.

About the vet school, I see why people tell you that. It’s a lot of work and very challenging (you need to study few things that are gross/very sad, you will eventually see things you didn’t want to see and so on)… but still, it’s a wonderful experience in my opinion. I can’t imagine doing anything else besides being a Veterinarian.

If you like it, and you are interested in that, you should definitely go for it. To me, it’s better to have a job that you like, rather than a job you hate. You will most likely spend 30-40+ years working, so you better like your job

[Nina]

Hi Lucre,

It's great to hear from you, and to know that Bamboo and Vega are doing so well! And thanks for posting such good advice about career choice and being a vet.

Best,
Nina