so excited.....

[hoopalou]

I am very excited! I have agreed to buy three more Hermann tortoises from a guy who is selling up his breeding stock!!!!

I am getting two females and a male and have first choice over the whole group he has.......
He also has adult yellowfoots, red foots, Ibera, horsfield and sulcatas for sale but I'm sticking to hermanns as I already have a 2.4.1 group.

But the thing I am MOST excited about is meeting a fellow tortoise 'Nut' who lives in Ireland and seems to be as passionate and excited about these animals as me

I should be getting my new trio either this weekend or early next week and I am soooooo excited

 

[stephiiberrybean]

ooh. Exciting

Lots of photos needed when you get your new trio

 

[hoopalou]

Definitely!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[dmmj]

nice one

 

[hali]

oww very exciting - good luck x

 

[Isa]

It is very exciting

 

[Jacqui]

I am excited for you too! How awesome to get to really go and talk with somebody else about tortoises. Be sure to take pictures of his other tortoises as well as their enclosures, if you can. Thanks!

 

[Tortoise]

Congrats on finding more tortoises and a tortoise friend too-they are a joy to have and we are quite isolated here so always fun to meet new friends with tortoises.

Look forward to photos

 

[hoopalou]

My excitement is turning to disappointment. the guy selling the tortoises is very reluctant to answer any of my questions, he will not commit to when I can collect the tortoises either. It has taken him until today to send me pictures and even then it was only the tops of their shells. There is something that is just not sitting right in my belly........... something is not right. He is also selling yellow foots and redfoots, horsfields and says he has spur thighed and Sullys..... all together in his back garden. There seems to be no shelter or accommodation for any of them and they are just 'free-roaming'. I asked him to send me pictures of his sullies as I have a baby one and was interested in them. He sent me a pictures of three of the most perfect, smooth shelled sullies I have ever seen, sitting in the grass in a cold Irish garden????

What do I do???? I don't think that I will be buying them, but the thoughts of all those lovely tortoises out in the cold, wet and damp Irish weather is very upsetting to me.

 

[lynnedit]

That's awful for you. I wonder if he really doesn't have any torts, and they are fake pics? One starts thinking all sorts of things...

 

[hoopalou]

Lynne.... I did do a google search to see if I could find if the pictures had been lifted from somewhere. But they are all definitely on the same grass and in the same garden. I'm just wondering are they stolen.... there has been a huge spate of thefts in the U.K and it wouldn't be hard to get them across the Irish sea!!!!!

 

[dmmj]

your gut feelings usually works out for people, I would follow it, if this sounds hinky to you, more investigation may be warranted.
Is he gonna ship them?or allow pick up? how does the law work there with stolen property?

 

[ALDABRAMAN]

 

[ForestExotics]

Sounds fishy to me.

 

[GBtortoises]

Sounds more like a BS story to me. Suspiciously like the person that you were dealing with did not have the animals but was trying to buy them from someone else and the deal fell through for him. We have people here in the U.S. that do that all the time. They often lie about what they have as being "in stock" or "their own personal long term breeders" when in fact they're either buying them from another source to pass on to the interested party in order to make a quick profit or as in many cases, they're buying up a bunch of tortoises of the same species from various sources and claiming that they're a "long term breeding group". In most cases when asked the seller cannot provide current photos or photos of the group together, or any proof that he has them. The sure way to know that he at least has them is to ask for a photo of some of them with today's newspaper and/or his drivers license next to them. At that point you rarely hear from the person ever again. Even at that, current photos only prove that he currently has them, not where they came from or how long he may have actually had them. Ask how long he's had them and where (and who) he got them from. Ask for references too. Also look very carefully at the photos. Many scammers are pulling other peoples pictures off the internet and claiming that they have the animals in the photograph. A couple of years ago I actually received an photo from a scammer of one of my own tortoises that he claimed that he had for sale!