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Hello all! My name's LeAndra, and after being a creep and admiring everyone's lovely pets and doing tortoise/turtle research of my own and keep being lead to links to threads on this page I figured why not register!As yet, I've not owned a tortoise, simply because I live in Maine, and short of purchasing them online and hoping they come in alive it is almost impossible to find a tortoise in this state -____- Also, I have a curious 3 year old son, and a baby girl on the way so I'm (impatiently) putting my tortoise hunt on hold (wah)
BUT- I do have experience with aquatic turtles, and a slight obsession with anything turtle/tortoise. I'm 19 years old and have been fascinated with turtles since I was probably 6. I was a 11 when I got my first pet turtle, she was a common musk turtle (stinkpot), and was named Humphrey (Humphrietta upon learning her gender), and was a total sweetheart, A local pet store told me and my family that she was a protected Spotted turtle, or Snapping turtle (she clearly was neither) and recommended that I purchase a RES and release her. Well, I'd already fallen in love and she was happy and healthy in the huge partly see-through long 60-something gallon Rubbermaid-turned-turtle home set up that I had her in, but my dad got the RES (enter Slick) anyway, and the two lived happily ever after for about 6 years. They're now working on year two in my neighbors large turtle pond, Humphrey stays in the pond year-round and has reached her maturity and laid her first clutch this year, and Slick over-winter's inside in a 75 gallon tank. They briefly had two hatchling snapping turtle companions, who also now live in the pond with them, along with a mama snapper who keeps to herself, 4 female EPT's who've all laid this year, and 2 male EPT's.
This spring my step-father assisted me in going against my mother and rescuing what we thought was a released pet (EPT) who was wandering around in the road no where near the only pond for 20+ miles, I scooped her up and she happily kept her head out to be scratched under the chin and talked to, my son has named her Wendy, and she eats out of my hand, but refuses to eat fish (feeder guppies from adult sized to newly born babies, they breed in the tank and all feed together, even when she refused to eat reptomin, crickets, earth worms, etc) She laid a few eggs, at least one was fertile so she had to have been wild or kept with a male, but chose to lay them in the water rather than laying in a huge nesting container, or when she was let outside (supervised) to nest. The first and only fertile egg I caught her lay and quickly removed and set up an incubation area, and now a month and a half at least later the egg is starting to turn whitish, and has been handled only to check that it wasn't going bad, and to shine a light to the egg and reveal veins and the dark spot of baby turtle. She waited another few weeks and laid the remainder of eggs also in her tank, which she ate (yuck).
Anywho, I'm starting to ramble now so I'll just close with saying eventually I'll have a tortoise, but for now I've had 1 Common Musk, 1 RES, 2 Common Snapper Hatchlings, and 1 EPT & I'm looking forward to learning more and sharing what I've learned with everyone else!
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