One of our clients recently realized that the box turtle they were caring for was an imposter! They told us their story this way:
A male box turtle has red eye color
“By our recollection, we first had two Carolina box turtles show up at our front steps in the summer of 2004. With a little reading and some guessing, we decided that one was a male and the other female. The two continued to show up for food or our companionship. The female was more inclined to pay us some attention, but wild turtles are not very cuddley. Little by little we settled on a diet of tomatoes and sometimes raw hamburger. We never knew when one would come, and their visits were rarely together. Each fall they quit coming as abruptly as they had begun that spring, and we learned that they hibernate for the winter since they are cold-blooded and their body temperature depends on the ambient temperature.
The next spring, they began coming back again. To shorten the story by several years, the same routine was repeated each year up through the fall of 2011. In time, we gave them names: ”Rex” and ”Regina”.
The swelling on the right side of this box turtle's head (to the left side of the photo) represents an ear infection
But two notable events figure in the story. In August of 2009, we discovered that the male had a big enlargement on the side of his head. Our regular cat/dog vet referred us to the Avian and Exotic Animal Care clinic, which fortunately is nearby. They were wonderful and immediately diagnosed his problem as a severely infected ear. They took him in the back for a while and dug out the by-then congealed material. We went home with Rex looking much better, and we had medicine to treat him. Each day we were to spread an antibiotic ointment on his ear. Every third day, we gave him a hypodermic shot in his rump. When the medicine gave out, Rex was a much better turtle, and we returned him to the pavement outside our front door.
- A tortoise with swollen eyes and respiratory infection
In December, 2011, we found Rex about 40 feet from the front door, standing out in an open forested area. He was supposed to be hibernating. We had seen Regina digging in the early fall as if she were making preparations, but except for the ear episode two years earlier we had never seen Rex anywhere other than at our front steps. It seemed unnatural for him to be out and about at this time of year, even though we had had a mild winter so far. We also noticed that his eyes seemed swollen and he was “wiping” them with his front legs. So, off to the Avian and Exotic Animal Care clinic again. Yes, he did have infected eyes and also a respiratory infection. These would require a few weeks of medication to treat, and he would need to be kept indoors for the rest of the winter because he was in no shape to hibernate now. We gave Rex his medicines, including more rump shots, and he eventually came around just fine.
Two weeks ago, our 19-year-old Siamese cat decided to spend a warm night outside, which she is not supposed to do. We left the front lights on, and the wife woke up often to go to the front door to call her. Well, about 5:00 am, she again saw no cat but found a turtle on the porch. Not on the brick walkway between the asphalt drive and the steps to the porch where we regularly fed them but up on the top of the porch. He was pacing along the edge of the top tread, up four steps each 6½ inches high. The wife was curious, but mostly she was still mad at the cat. So, she put the turtle back down on the brick walk and went back to bed.
Mount Everest: this is what those front steps must have looked like to a box turtle!
At 6:45, she woke me up to come look at something. She had let the cat in finally! But then she saw the turtle back up on the porch. We were not sure that our cold weather was over and we wanted to be able to bring him in if we were going to have a cold night, so we put him “out to pasture” where we had kept Rex during his recuperation from the ear infection. Just to be sure, we have made his walls higher.
I photographed him as I had routinely done to other turtles that happen by because they each have such distinctive patterns. Comparing photos of the new turtle with those of Rex who had visited us so many years, their patterns were identical! Could we have identical twin turtles?
A little later, the wife yelled to day that “Rex” in our basement was not “Rex,” and she held an old photo next to the live turtle to prove it. We had never checked the markings on the one in our basement. We were acting as humans often act in “knowing” something so completely that we had never thought to examine our basic presumptions, and without taking time here to explore the many fascinating, valuable, philosophical and historical lessons for all aspects of life related to this lazy and careless practice and how people can so easily come to believe silly things which they then staunchly defend without any rationale at all, I’ll return to the turtle story. Clearly, the new climbing turtle was really Rex.
Are you as confused as we were? The turtle whom we had named Rex to go with Regina and who was at least a common-law husband of Regina, was now in our back yard while another male was in our basement, pretending to be Rex. Even his medical records said “Mr. Rex.”
Sir Edmund Hillary
We knew that in these bureaucratic days, lots of problems can come about if medical records get messed up, (children swapped at birth, confused Social Security benefits, etc.) so we decided to let the new turtle assume the permanent name “Rex”, while the original Rex in our back yard was re-christened “Sir Edmund” after Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the men who were the initial climbers of Mt. Everest in 1953. Surely, scaling 26 inches of straight-up brick steps twice in one night is a more difficult feat for a box turtle than climbing a mere 29,029-foot sloping mountain side is to two well equipped men over a two-week period with dozens of helpers and a year of planning.
As we near the end of this tale, it came to pass that we decided to take Sir Edmund to the Avian and Exotic Animal Care clinic because he was not eating anything we offered him, even after months of hibernation. He was pronounced healthy after a visual exam. If he does not begin eating, we are to return him for blood work, an X-ray to look for obstructions in his GI tract, etc.
What we have learned from all this is to be more thorough in taking care of strange critters. If you show up on our porch, day or night, we will feed you but then immediately put you in a box with some worms to keep you amused, then go straight for the blood work, X-rays, and recuperation with the help of AEAC!”
March 30, 2012
