Always trying to escape?

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demo183

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I have my female Russian in a plastic under-the-bed storage bin (obviously its not under the bed now that shes in it. And she is constantly trying to climb the sides. The container is that white-seethroughish material that storage bins are sometimes made of. I understand they don't understand see through material so I covered the sides with duct tape and the sides are now opaque. She is always trying to climb the sides, I just want to know if this is okay or if it is stressing her out.
 

Tom

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Pretty normal behavior. Something with taller sides might discourage this and lots of outside time in a safe enclosure will probably reduce it too.
 

Yvonne G

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Hi Phil:

You are seeing behavior indicative of a tortoise that really needs to be outside. If that's not possible, then a larger habitat with some sight barriers would help a lot.
 

demo183

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I give her like 30 minutes in the sun supervised a day (gonna stop in the next few months since i live in new england) but when shes outside all she does is chow on mallow and plantain, she doesn't adventure. Then indoors she adventures trying to escape! im hopefully building her a bigger table 5'x3' soon. But for now is this okay behavior that I dont have to worry about?
 

Yvonne G

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Yep. No worry. Its probably because she HAS experienced being outdoors that she tries so frantically to escape. She wants more outside time. Its quite normal.
 

RumBrave13

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Hi,

I am really glad to have found this thread, our RT Dimitri climbs the walls as well. We take him outside for a little sun onour patio (seond floor). The patio has a metal railing that he can crawl through which would be devastating. To ensure that he doesnt go through it, we blocked it off with a few old fish tanks and a lid of the same platic seethrough material. For some reason he bee lines straight to the plastic and tries to climb it. We are going to look into seeing if a baby gate will help for this. We are just glad to hear that this is normal behavior for RT's.

On a side note, we were potting a few plants and Dimitri tried to get into the soil bag lol, We moved him immediately. He sure likes to explore.
 

Grigor.Love.

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My RT is in a 50 gallon rubbermaide tub and he climbs on the walls as well. I had read that transparent enclosures sometimes stressed them out so I put black tape all around the bottom about 5 inches tall. He still climbs on the walls. I usually take him outside, but winter is coming so I allow him to walk around inside the house, which doesn't seem problematic (correct me anyone if I'm wrong). Try to make his substrate deeper if you can. That seemed to help mine.
 

jbean7916

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I take KP for his outside time and leave him IN the tub he has inside. He doesn't seem to want to go anywhere else and is still comfortable with his smallish (compared to the back yard) enclosure
 

Grigor.Love.

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jbean7916 said:
I take KP for his outside time and leave him IN the tub he has inside. He doesn't seem to want to go anywhere else and is still comfortable with his smallish (compared to the back yard) enclosure

I feel like this was kind of a dig on my part.
 

jbean7916

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Grigor.Love. said:
jbean7916 said:
I take KP for his outside time and leave him IN the tub he has inside. He doesn't seem to want to go anywhere else and is still comfortable with his smallish (compared to the back yard) enclosure

I feel like this was kind of a dig on my part.

Not a dig at all!!! I was just letting you know what works for me.

I'm sorry if it came off the wrong way but I was under the impression you were looking for ideas to calm the escaping behavior. I apologize if that wasn't the case.
 

Grigor.Love.

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Ah I misunderstood. I allow my tortoise to wander the house and I thought you were expressing it best to keep him in his tub. Ha, sorry. :)
 
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