A few days ago our gardener found a small tortoise huddling with a garden statute we have of a lifelike desert tortoise. He brought it to us.
It is about the size of the palm of an adult hand and is extremely friendly and social. A local vet believes it was a pet someone let go or that escaped. We put up flyers and no one responded.
He eats like a little horse -- we are feeding him greens, timothy hay and he loves dandelions and tiny flowers from strawberry plants. We have him in a large box cut in half (about 2.5 feet by 3.5 feet) with some hidy hole boxes, a commercial bedding made for tortoises. We keep him in our court yard during the day and make sure he has sun and shade. At night we bring him in because he seems to get too cold.
He shows no fear of people or of our dogs and our cat (they all touch noses). So given his total lack of fear we have been afraid to let him go. Besides, we live in the suburbs of Woodland Hills.
We have called a few rescue leagues the moment he was found and have not heard back -- we are worried that if we have a wild tortoise we have done a bad thing "rescuing him" but we are worried if he will touch noses with a dog he would with a coyote or raccoon (we have plenty around.)
Now, we love critters of all kinds and would commit to him the care he needs, but after reading about hibernating him am worried with such a small baby (I think he is a baby) we are in over our heads. He is way too small to just let roam free in our large yard -- he is sooo fast he would be gone in a second. But if he is not a pet where do we let him go that is safe? I read there is a 100% mortality rate if he was not a wild tort and we let him go. Such a sweet creature dying because we let him go breaks our hearts --I just wish we had another opinion besides the vets so we could be more confident in what the right thing to do is.
Any advice, ideas? Thoughts about if he is domesticated by his behavior? He eats well, is very active, and we let him explore the yard several times a day supervised.
We do not want to be doing the wrong thing for this adorable little guy that my children have named "Total" (a mispronunciation of "Turtle" because one of them could not remember he is a tortoise!)
Thank you so much.
It is about the size of the palm of an adult hand and is extremely friendly and social. A local vet believes it was a pet someone let go or that escaped. We put up flyers and no one responded.
He eats like a little horse -- we are feeding him greens, timothy hay and he loves dandelions and tiny flowers from strawberry plants. We have him in a large box cut in half (about 2.5 feet by 3.5 feet) with some hidy hole boxes, a commercial bedding made for tortoises. We keep him in our court yard during the day and make sure he has sun and shade. At night we bring him in because he seems to get too cold.
He shows no fear of people or of our dogs and our cat (they all touch noses). So given his total lack of fear we have been afraid to let him go. Besides, we live in the suburbs of Woodland Hills.
We have called a few rescue leagues the moment he was found and have not heard back -- we are worried that if we have a wild tortoise we have done a bad thing "rescuing him" but we are worried if he will touch noses with a dog he would with a coyote or raccoon (we have plenty around.)
Now, we love critters of all kinds and would commit to him the care he needs, but after reading about hibernating him am worried with such a small baby (I think he is a baby) we are in over our heads. He is way too small to just let roam free in our large yard -- he is sooo fast he would be gone in a second. But if he is not a pet where do we let him go that is safe? I read there is a 100% mortality rate if he was not a wild tort and we let him go. Such a sweet creature dying because we let him go breaks our hearts --I just wish we had another opinion besides the vets so we could be more confident in what the right thing to do is.
Any advice, ideas? Thoughts about if he is domesticated by his behavior? He eats well, is very active, and we let him explore the yard several times a day supervised.
We do not want to be doing the wrong thing for this adorable little guy that my children have named "Total" (a mispronunciation of "Turtle" because one of them could not remember he is a tortoise!)
Thank you so much.