George Robles (SJPD photo)
Posted on 02/04/2021 11:47:49 PM PST by LibWhacker
George Robles (SJPD photo)
A tortoise named Michelangelo is recovering after a man broke into a San Francisco Bay Area preschool and stabbed and beat the pet, which is estimated to be about 70 years old, authorities said.
The 65-pound African sulcata tortoise was found Saturday with a piece of wood and a rake handle stabbed through his outer shell. The attacker apparently used garden tools taken from the school.
“I thought he was dead … So it was almost a good feeling when he hissed at me because I knew he was alive,” Tammy Lariz, the administrator at Play ‘N’ Learn Preschool in San Jose, told KPIX-TV. “Whenever he would move or we would try to move him, more blood would come.”
Awwww!
Little water turtles!
We have those running around, too.
They tend to be on the back roads near the rivers and creeks so don’t get into traffic situations all that often.
I once rode home on the Harley with one tucked in my vest pocket.
It was in the road, a long way from any water source.
We have two kinds of people here.
Those who go out of their way to run over box turtles and those who go way out of their way to help them across the road.
There’s an area on the west slope of the mountain that has a lot of turtles crossing during warm months.
It’s kind of a race between my kind of people and the other kind.
You should never remove them from the area in which you find them.
If they’re on the road, take them to the side it appears they were headed for and turn them loose.
They have reasons for the road crossings and will attempt another if not taken to where they were going, initially.
Also, if removed from their territory, they will wander endlessly, trying to get back to it.
They have a very small territory which they never leave voluntarily.
Being a turtle is kind of hard, in modern times.
Wow!
I have never had the privilege of seeing them *that* young.
The apple-sized girl was the smallest I’ve ever seen.
They are so freaking cute I can’t stand it.
:D
Box turtles here are hatching out somewhere in the depths of the woods where we don’t see them that small.
The water turtle babies, though, are all over the banks of streams and creeks in the summer.
One of the craziest things I ever saw was back when i was a kid.
The whole fam damily would take jon boats down Licking Creek to picnic on the small islands.
One year, there were hundreds of thousands of newly land-worthy baby frogs and toads.
The ground was *alive* with them, there were so many.
Best picnic, ever.
I’m in a reptile-poor area. A few Western Pond Turtles and a red-eared slider that someone turned loose in the park decades ago.
I remember a crazy rainstorm we had inArka was ghat had baby toads everywhere.
#####You should never remove them from the area in which you find them.####
Gosh, wasn’t aware of that. Thanks for the heads up.
Over most of the years I’ve gotten them off the roads, neither was I.
Lucky for them, my yard, where I took them to, was only a few hundred yards away from where they normally would have been, anyway so it was not that much stress for them.
For the last 13 years or so, it’s been to the other side of the road they were crossing, only.
I always feel guilty for the ones I’d moved before and I hope the few hundred yards were not too much for them to reorient themselves.
*If* I weren’t too old for it now, I’d slide down the mountainside to the vernal pools in the gullies below and try to see the hatchling babies.
[If you never hear from me again, I did a stupid thing, couldn’t get back up and the buzzards ate me]
:D
I wish I could ship you some turtles.
We have water turtles, galore.
Sliders, Skilpots, Snappers, Muds and everything else.
I was hugely disappointed to learn that I can’t get alligator snappers in Oregon. . The others I think I can order from Florida, as soon as the weather warms up a bit.
“Ship your reptiles” is really good.
Do NOT let them overnight FedEx anything.
A ball python I bought from a breeder in Georgia took a 3 day scenic tour through half a dozen states in the dead of winter.
Poor thing had an RI by the time he got here.
He got better but still...
They overnight UPS. It spent more time riding in the truck in town than it did flying across the country.
You are exactly my kind of people.
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