Bittersweet Memories and an impossible ID

[Balboa]

I was just thinking about my all time favorite childhood pet. Timmy the Turtle. I know now that the poor thing was horribly kept, but he (really likely a she I think now), always seemed happy and healthy. She was very socialized, never bit me, and would stretch out her neck for me to scratch under her chin when I picked her up.
She lived in a tiny aquarium some of the time, no basking light, just a HOT ROCK buried in the gravel substrate at one end. Mostly she ate bananas. On the plus side she got frequent baths, I remember how much she loved to swim. I remember frequently wetting down the gravel, and I doubt the pet store suggested that, hot rocks in water! oh my! I'm not sure where I got the idea to do that, but obviously that made for a nice humid environment. There was also a budgie cage nearby, and they'd frequently knock seed into her gravel, which sprouted nicely giving her some fresh greens, lol. Some happy accidents may have made her existance not quite so awful.
The only UVB she'd have gotten would be the little bit from windows during the summer. We'd frequently let her wander around the house, another big nono. She'd wander a day or two, then be found basking by a window, get a bath and some food back in her tank.
Eventually, she never popped back up after a house roam. We searched the house high and low. She was never found. Our best guess is that one of my younger brothers let her out to play in the grass. I've talked to my parents as an adult about it, so no it wasn't one of those, "oh crap, his turtle died, make it disappear" deals. No trace of her was ever found. Was it not for that I'd like to think I'd still have her to this day, but in reality she was doomed from improper care and would have not likely lasted long enough for her owner to get smart enough to care for her properly.

Here she is, the only picture I have of her. Yes this is a digital pic of an old Kodachrome. Really no way to ID her from it. In looking at pictures of different turtles, Ornata strikes me as the most similiar to my memory, but I recall her having a more yellowish plastron, not the blackish I see in most pics. I also recall her having 1 less toe on one hind leg, like a half 3-Toe.



My parents replaced Timmy with Bettina (who was likely a He, and now I think of an entirely different species) but he didn't last long. Very unhappy, inactive, never made the adaption. (no wonder, I just got lucky with Timmy!) We gave up after that. I never owned another chelonian until we got Rocky. As an adult I had thought to try again, but after properly researching care, felt awful about what my Turtles had endured. Aside from the difficulty of proper care, by that time Box Turtles were unobtanium around here anyways.

 

[egyptiandan]

Yes Timmy was a female Ornate box turtle. Where did you live? as Timmy was probably a local as most petshops back than just bought animals from kids that brought them in.

Danny

 

[Kenny]

Sad story, that I think alot of us have a version of. Mine was a leopard gecko named "Burger".
Here's to Timmy being a great pet in spite of everything.

 

[Missy]

Touching story, thanks for sharing.

 

[dmmj]

ditto here mine was a pancake tortoise I was 12, no internet, no books, I paid 90 dollars for the guy, fed it mostly fruits and vegetables, tried to hibernate it, ( tortoises hibernate right?) did not make it more than a year, even after over 20 years I still get upset about it.

 

[Balboa]

Thanks Everyone!

and thanks for the ID Dan, I knew if anyone could do it you could.

Actually I lived/still live in the PNW, and we have no native Box Turtles. This would have been around 1980, and I have no idea where the pet store got them, likely kids catching them somewhere else and trucked in I'm sure. Poor Turtles.

They do occasionally get found "feral" around here.

 

[terryo]

That was a great story. I was born into box turtles. My Dad always had them. Years ago he had a friend who worked on a ship, and he used to go down to the docks or a store that they would bring tortoises into, and he'd come home with something. I don't remember all of it, but Frank, our boxie was there when I was born, and up until two years ago was still in my parents yard, where my sister lives now. My own box turtle, an Ornate is about 32 years old now. I've had her since she was a tiny hatchling. I don't remember a time when we didn't have box turtles. I'm really new to tortoises, as my first one is only 3 years old.

 

[travisgn]

This somehow makes me feel slightly better (but at the same time sad all over again) about the box turtle my family had when I was growing up.

Same basic situation. No proper lighting, poor diet, small aquarium. Perhaps worst of all we only fed him once or twice a week, thinking that they didn't need to eat very often. We did take him outside pretty frequently in the summer, but in Michigan that isn't much of the year. Maybe some day I could dig up some old pictures at my parents house and get an ID.

My older brother brought him home from school after he could no longer be kept as a class pet. He was already full grown at the time. We had him for 15 years before he died, so he lived a somewhat reasonable life span, I suppose.

We called it a him, but named him Myrtle the Turtle. Go figure.

One day when I was quite young he escaped the outdoor enclosure we had him in. A week went by with no sign of him until one of my parents spotted him - at the end of the driveway! Our driveway was about a mile long, so he actually made it some distance.