Felter, my new 3-toed

Gillian M

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Oh
I have a confession to make. I incarcerated another wild boxie. But i can EXPLAIN!
On June 11 i was driving to work and there was a little boxie parked in the middle of the dirt road. It was clearly pointing to the west side of the road, so i stopped to transfer him to that side.
I picked him up, our eyes met,

View attachment 177939 and we realized we were kozmic soul-mates. :p
(This pic taken today though.)

I strongly felt it would be WRONG to let him go there; that he would LIKE to be my pet. That he would enjoy captivity and being fed by a Food God.
I figured, if it didn't turn out that way, if he was hell-bent on escaping, i could release him again.

In Arkansas there are no laws governing 3-toeds. (Ornates are don't touch.)

So i took him to work, put him in a cardboard box all day, except when i soaked him.

Took him home. At first i put him in a 27-gallon tote with some cypress mulch, pet moss, and the rest of my coir. Dampened. Boring, nothing else in it.
He never dug under it, just stood on top. The first couple days, he did occasionally try to climb out the corners. Every time i noticed that, i would gently pick him up and hold him to the window, to show him the world had not disappeared. He would just contentedly sit in my hands peering out at the trees and flowers, neck extended, until i got bored and put him back.

Then i made a trip to Home Depot and got one of their black 55-gallon totes ($25). BTW when i got it home i realized it was imbued with foul toxic perfume, so i soaked/scrubbed it with non-toxic detergent and aired it out in the sun, which got rid of most of the stench. I'll post some pics of his setup later; a work in progress.
Soon i plan to make him an outdoor habitat.

This time of year i soak my turtles outside a lot. Three-toed boxies are fairly partial to water, and they seem to enjoy just floating all day with their back legs straight back and head in the air.
So i can turn off the CHEs and lights much of the day and also i don't worry about hydration at all.

One has to be careful that the volume of water is large enough not to overheat in the hot sun. I use 150-gallon stock tanks.

(got pics but the forum doesn't let me post more than 1 pic per post anymore, so i will append later.)

Also if you put in an island, you have to keep the island about the same level as the water. My other boxie, Rorg, will jump off a higher rock and land upside-down and be unable to right himself.

Anyway, i totally adore this boxie. He has an unusual name because he is unusual. he has a bad shell split that looks several years old and must have happened when he was pretty small. Did a bird drop him, or did he do some cliff-diving without a parachute? There is some minor damage elsewhere on his shell (see in pic later) which suggests he tumbles down embankments -- which seems to be a trait of these boxies.

Also his eyes look weird. But he seems to have real sharp vision at dinner time. He has not touched his cuttlebone. He likes worms, bugs, and lettuce stems a lot. I have a bunch of lettuce that bolted, so i feed him the stems, which he prefers to the leaves, although he eats some leaf too. He will eat the volume of 2 cigarettes a day in lettuce leaf stems. (pic later)

I have not noticed him eating any of the other leaves i put in there. He may have eaten a couple squash flowers.
He is lukewarm toward raspberries and blackberries. Will slowly eat one sometimes.
He loves tomato. I have fed him 3 tiny marble-sized cherry tomatoes and plan to keep his ration short on that. Also i tried little slivers of mango, kiwi, and apricot, and of course he snarfed these right up.

Urine: on 4 occasions i have noticed that he dumped 2-3 tbs of urine in non-stress situations (he has never peed on me and seems relatively feerless). I don't know what this means, as i thought they normally do not pee. I have seen no urates yet.

One of the weirdest things about him is he doesn't want to hide! I put an "irresistable" cave in his tote, but he would not go in. I saw him pause outside it, sniffing and peering in, but he never went in! I dunno if he had a traumatic experience entering a burrow in the past, or what.
Today i re-vamped his tote, and put in an old plastic mailbox for a larger cave that maybe he'll use. But so far, no interest. he just climbs around or rests in a corner.

Also if i spray him with a mister, he perks right up and walks right into the spray.

He is just such a sweet, well-behaved pet. Seems totally adjusted to the domesticated lifestyle. Never makes noise scrabbling about at night. Never even tries to get out during the day anymore. Yet is very extroverted.
All his turds are about 1.5" long and look like tar, but well-formed with scant odor.

Oh, he's gorgeous!
 

Loohan

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His head is swelling from all these compliments.
Actually i did not pick him for his looks. All these 3tbt's tend to be good-looking, and he is not one of the most striking.
I nabbed him because i could sense his great personality and "pet-ability".Felter1.6.17.jpg

I brumated him for 5 weeks and fed him his first worm of the year this morning. While he was soaking in warm carrot juice.
He is such an easy-to-get-along with, fearless little guy. Or gal.
 

Loohan

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Jan 5, 2015
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I admit, though, that he does have a cool face.
One interesting thing is, last year i found out that if i put my other little one, Rorg (who is still in the fridge now) on the kitchen table, he would eventually walk over to the edge, peer down, and then leap. Of course, i was always ready to catch him. He would do this repeatedly.
But Felter walks to the edge, peers down, and backs away. I think he learned a traumatic lesson about heights when he was in the wild, which is how his shell got bunged up.

Incidentally the shell is healing noticeably.

No interest in salad yet. I'll try some mango later.
 
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