Some husbandry no-no's

[GotTort]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/n...prod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

 

[Sara G.]

99% of this article was cringe-worthy. Ugh.

 

[Tom]

You'd have to be pretty naive to think that the grass in central park isn't full of chemicals. I got busted by the police for running my dog there. They lectured me about all the poisons and squirrel bait that my dog could have gotten into.

Poor tortoise.

 

[GotTort]

Unfortunately these are the sort of articles about tortoise ownership that show up in the popular press.

 

[Tom]

Unfortunately these are the sort of articles about tortoise ownership that show up in the popular press.

Yeah. An article about my care regime would be pretty boring:

"Today Tom scraped the poo of the bottom of the night box, rinsed and refilled the water tub, and dropped some spineless opuntia pads on top of the pile of grass hay… {yawn…}… His tortoises are in no danger of poisoning, getting lost, getting too cold or ingesting anything dangerous hidden in the grass…" Ho-hum.

 

[WithLisa]

I'm curious to know what Ms. McCallister plans to do once Henry is not a 17-pound tortoise anymore but rather a 150-pound tortoise.

Why are people so stupid and buy sulcatas when they don't even have a garden?

 

[Tom]

Why are people so stupid and buy sulcatas when they don't even have a garden?

Be careful with questions like this… You are opening a whole new can-o-worms here…

 

[TortoiseWarrior]

Wow.... just wow

 

[Big Charlie]

I'm curious to know what Ms. McCallister plans to do once Henry is not a 17-pound tortoise anymore but rather a 150-pound tortoise.

Why are people so stupid and buy sulcatas when they don't even have a garden?

Ms. McCallister is just the employee hired to take care of him, without any training. The owner is Amanda Green. It seems awfully selfish to me to get an animal without taking his needs into account. Dare I say it seems she only got him for the public attention he garners for her.

 

[huff747]

While I agree with what is being said, at least it's a story with a positive perspective with scaly pets. I use to breed pythons and there never seems to be anything other than completely negative coverage for them. Right or wrong somebody may see this story that never keeps a tortoise that has a positive feeling about them now that may eventually vote to support them if it ever gets to that point.

 

[Sara G.]

It being a publicly positive story doesn't do any good for the torts imo. If anything it makes people want them because they're "so cool" and then it results in torts that aren't taken care of properly because people don't know how to.

 

[Tom]

While I agree with what is being said, at least it's a story with a positive perspective with scaly pets. I use to breed pythons and there never seems to be anything other than completely negative coverage for them. Right or wrong somebody may see this story that never keeps a tortoise that has a positive feeling about them now that may eventually vote to support them if it ever gets to that point.

You make a good point, and I agree.

But I can't disagree with Sara's counter-point either. Do we want to encourage people in NY high rises to buy sulcatas? To me this story is the equivalent of somebody taking pics of their 15' burmese hanging out with their toddler to show how safe it is and how positive snake ownership could be. As Sara noted in post number 2 of this thread "cringe-worthy".

 

[GotTort]

Agree with Sara and Tom