Bogie=babyDINO
Active Member
Just wondering how everyone chose the species they have. There are so many! Different sizes, looks, personality, health requirements! What species do you have and how did you choose?
Thanks for sharing. Thats very cool how you still have mi-shelle. Love the name tooMany, many years ago, way back in the '50s, we would find tortoises walking around in the street where we lived. Now, so many years later, and knowing so much more about tortoises than I knew then, I'm guessing these tortoises were taken from the desert and brought home to Fresno, and they subsequently escaped their yards because people didn't know how to care for them.
Way back then, I thought a tortoise was a tortoise was a tortoise. All in all, while we lived in that neighborhood, we found over time 5 tortoises. They were all what I now know were desert tortoises except for one which was very yellow and quite good at climbing out of the cardboard box I had it in. To my untrained eye it looked like the other tortoises except for its color, same size, etc. I'm now wondering if it might have been a Chaco. It was too early to have been a sulcata, as they weren't imported yet. We just tossed them all in the backyard with our in-the-ground pool and fed them kitchen scraps. They were lucky that there was a lot of grass in the yard because we fed them mashed potatoes and gravy, salad with the dressing on it, spaghetti, bread, etc.
When we moved to the country in the '70s I put them all into a nice area with a T-post and chicken wire fence. By the next morning they were all gone.
Fast forward to the '80s and I joined a Herp club. I was very much amazed to realize that tortoises from other countries didn't look like desert tortoises.
But to answer your question, the first real pet tortoise I had was when my son came home from the service and he started rescuing box turtles from pet stores that weren't keeping them properly. Someone at his work found out he liked turtles and brought him a female desert tortoise that their dad had hit with the tractor as he was discing between the grape vines. Mi-Shelle had a big diagonal cut across her shell. The dad brought her into the house, cleaned out the cut and packed it with new Play-doh.
When my son got a rottweiler pup and the pup wouldn't leave the turtles and tortoise alone he asked if I would take them. Of course, I did.
This was still before much was going on with computers, and I didn't have one. But I joined many clubs across the nation the main one of which was the National Turtle and Tortoise Society based in Arizona. I got monthly newsletters and that's how I gained my initial knowledge about turtles and tortoises.
I still have my first tortoise, Mi-Shelle. I estimate she's about 90 years old, and I've had her about 42 years.
Mi-Shelle is on the left:
View attachment 196599
Just wondering how everyone chose the species they have. There are so many! Different sizes, looks, personality, health requirements! What species do you have and how did you choose?
Oh I love box turtles too! My favorite are the three toes!!! Where I live it is perfect for box turtles since they are native here so thats is another reason I choose them. They can live outside 24/7 all year round.I've loved box turtles since the 70s and still keep them today. My brother had one as a pet in the early to mid 70s which is when I fell in love. My redfoot I adopted from our local reptile rescue because he was outgoing and friendly, even though I've always wanted a leopard tortoise.