Don't buy a turtle. And for the love of God, don't buy two turtles.
This weekend brings the reboot of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise. When it launched in 1990, my 6-year-old son Matt loved the Turtles, with their eye bands and trash talk and crime-fighting abilities. My husband and I had fended off previous requests for pets from Matt, his brother and sister. What I knew of turtles was limited to the little ones, so cute and small in dishes in the homes of childhood friends. But we gave in.
The owner of our local pet shop told us all we'd need was a glass tank to hold a few inches of water, a couple of rocks and a light bulb for the two red-eared sliders, of ambiguous sex, which Matt named Creepy and Shelly. They were not small, as the sale of the little guys (with shells shorter than 4 inches) has been banned by the government since 1975 because of salmonella transmission. That's an issue with any size turtle, as it turns out, so this isn't a pet you can "play" with without a lot of hand-washing.
We headed home, unprepared for the next few decades of ownership and thousands of dollars in expenses (really, new tanks as the turtles grow, food, filters, heaters, medical care, from 1990-2013). And for the tank cleaning. Turtles are prodigious poopers, and none of the filters we purchased could keep up.
And therein lies the problem. As Susan Tellem, founder of American Tortoise Rescue in Malibu, Calif., told me, "The key is you need to understand before you get any pet is you have to spend some time with it....It's not a rock with legs."
Tellem and her husband founded the Rescue in 1990. They had become turtle owners when Tellem bought two Russian tortoises for her husband's birthday and learned about the need for a national group to advocate on behalf of terrapins. Since that time the group has rehomed 3,000 turtles/tortoises, but Tellem estimates that thousands more have met unfortunate fates, released illegally into rivers and lakes (or the ocean, deadly for the fresh-water turtles, she said). Or dumpsters.
She's sounding the alarm this week because, as with the Dalmatian population when Disney's "101 Dalmatians" films were released, the advent of a Turtle-themed movie inspires young fans to want a Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo or Raphael of their own. Those enthusiasms often are short-lived and the choices for unwanted turtles aren't great.
Zoos won't take 'em, Tellem said, and the rescue groups she's in touch with, including her own, are full up. The ideal setting for a turtle, she said, is a back-yard pond, a minimum of 4 feet deep, where the turtle can absorb sunlight and swim. Her group won't release a turtle to live in a glass tank. (Red-eared sliders, which the TMNT resemble, require enough water to swim around in as well as a place to get out of the water to bask.)
As for our turtles, Creepy and Shelly ended up in different places. The more spry of the two escaped from a back-yard pond in which he/she was summering and has not been seen again. The other one is living in a turtle rescue in Michigan, with room to swim and the chance to bask the sun. He/she was dropped off by the boy who requested him/her in the first place.
We headed home, unprepared for the next few decades of ownership and thousands of dollars in expenses (really, new tanks as the turtles grow, food, filters, heaters, medical care, from 1990-2013). And for the tank cleaning. Turtles are prodigious poopers, and none of the filters we purchased could keep up.
And therein lies the problem. As Susan Tellem, founder of American Tortoise Rescue in Malibu, Calif., told me, "The key is you need to understand before you get any pet is you have to spend some time with it....It's not a rock with legs."
Tellem and her husband founded the Rescue in 1990. They had become turtle owners when Tellem bought two Russian tortoises for her husband's birthday and learned about the need for a national group to advocate on behalf of terrapins. Since that time the group has rehomed 3,000 turtles/tortoises, but Tellem estimates that thousands more have met unfortunate fates, released illegally into rivers and lakes (or the ocean, deadly for the fresh-water turtles, she said). Or dumpsters.
She's sounding the alarm this week because, as with the Dalmatian population when Disney's "101 Dalmatians" films were released, the advent of a Turtle-themed movie inspires young fans to want a Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo or Raphael of their own. Those enthusiasms often are short-lived and the choices for unwanted turtles aren't great.
Zoos won't take 'em, Tellem said, and the rescue groups she's in touch with, including her own, are full up. The ideal setting for a turtle, she said, is a back-yard pond, a minimum of 4 feet deep, where the turtle can absorb sunlight and swim. Her group won't release a turtle to live in a glass tank. (Red-eared sliders, which the TMNT resemble, require enough water to swim around in as well as a place to get out of the water to bask.)
As for our turtles, Creepy and Shelly ended up in different places. The more spry of the two escaped from a back-yard pond in which he/she was summering and has not been seen again. The other one is living in a turtle rescue in Michigan, with room to swim and the chance to bask the sun. He/she was dropped off by the boy who requested him/her in the first place.
