I lived on a ranch on the weekends with my dad and his cattle company partners as a very young child, they used donkeys as security for predators and people. Never saw it in action myself but I would pay good money to see a miniature donkey kill a mountain lion. I saw a local news report about 3...
The one on the left is Sami, the Shiba/Eskimo mix, I found her in a dumpster near death, best dog I've ever had. The one in the middle is Scout, she is throwback Toller. Toller's are normally red and very expensive, her brindle coloring makes her worthless, I got a $2000 dog for free. Got her...
The problem with big dogs, no matter how good they are, dogs will be dogs, and a big dog can and most likely will wreck your Tortoises. I would never trust a dog of any size or temperament around my tortoises. My suggestion would be to build a secure enclosure that a coyote couldn't get into. I...
You can't directly work on this, and if you're keeping it indoors, it's pretty much impossible. If you want a second tortoise, then I recommend just having two separate indoor enclosures. The Russian tortoise, in my opinion, is the most aggressive tortoise species. My males chase me and bite my...
I have never seen my russians do this, sometimes, like people, tortoise are just weird. My friend has a Mojave that wiggles his hind end kind of like that when pet on his shell. To me, this looks like a smart tortoise, it looks like it's scratching an itch. If your tortoise hasn't been with a...
I've had a boom of Skinks and Alligator Lizards too, they came back on their own without my help. I think I jumped ahead of myself a bit giving credit to just one lizard, but the Swifts are the most common in the enclosure. I actually think Tom is right in his assessment, I've done more homework...
I could be wrong but then again I've watched full grown lizards go after bugs I couldn't see because they're so small. I read they eat fleas and ticks, which is what made me start this experiment in the first place. I did experience a decrease in fleas because of the carpet removal, but my...
This little guy is the Western Fence Lizard aka blue bellied lizard. If you live in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah or Washington then you probably see these guys all the time. When I first moved into my neighborhood here in SoCal, I rarely saw these guys and didn't think much...
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that when tortoises are sleeping with their heads in their shells, they're only able to use something like 2% of their lung capacity. They're anatomy is pretty impressive and they have a crazy amount of control over their bodily functions, 200 million + years of...
Vern sounds like the perfect name for that tortoise based off your two sentence story. Why does that sound like something a Vern would do?
Oh they did, they sure did.
So I had to leave for an overnight vacation on the one day the winds came in strong. I have recently built the current enclosure and it was never wind tested. Now I don't want anyone to worry, the obvious lesson of this story never happened and my tortoises are fine. My enclosure did fine...