Althouse: Rescue tortoise.

April 20, 2018

Rescue tortoise.

The 90-pound beast was found in San Diego County after it fell off a wall — "escaping a dog." The county spent $4,000 repairing its broken shell (with "screws, zip ties and denture material").

25 comments:

traditionalguy said...: TortoiseCare. Entitlements are fun.; 4/20/18, 9:26 AM
mockturtle said...: The 90-pound 'best' what?; 4/20/18, 9:27 AM
Big Mike said...: @mockturtle, so you feel a kinship?; 4/20/18, 9:28 AM
mockturtle said...: Not really, as I'm only a mockturtle, after all.; 4/20/18, 9:29 AM
rcocean said...: So it climbed a 10 foot wall?

And it "escaped a dog"?

I'm trying to imagine that.; 4/20/18, 9:31 AM
Gahrie said...: It wasn't taxpayer money..it was donations.; 4/20/18, 9:36 AM
Rob said...: Screws, zip ties and denture material are all that’s holding together Hillary’s broken spirit.; 4/20/18, 9:36 AM
Quaestor said...: Something's fishy about this story. Testudines aren't noted for "escaping" anything. Their reaction to a threat is not to flee. They hunker down, sometimes for many days on end. They are also very wary of situations likely to precipitate a fall, being more vulnerable than most other land vertebrates. 250 million years of evolution have honed their survival techniques remarkably. More likely someone arranged that tortoise's fall as a cruel prank.; 4/20/18, 9:43 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "The 90-pound 'best' what?"

Sorry. Beast.

Is a tortoise a beast?

I don't think it was best at anything. Best at falling off a wall. Which may be like falling off a log.

I like the way the article said he was "escaping a dog." What the hell kind of dog lets a tortoise run/walk away? Isn't that the point of a shell? Just hunker in.

Best at extracting money from the county, I think.

If you've got a 90-pound tortoise and you let it fall off a wall and crack its shell, maybe you just make yourself invisible (in your human shell) so the county will pay the $4,000 vet bill.; 4/20/18, 9:48 AM
Trumpit said...: I love turtles and tortoises. You can't just feed them iceberg lettuce and be done with it. It will cause nutritional deficiencies as well as cause their shell to grow poorly. Maybe "Humpty Dumpty" was an abused tortoise, and his shell cracked more severely as a result. I wouldn't be surprised.

http://www.provet.co.uk/petfacts/healthtips/tortoisefeeding.htm; 4/20/18, 9:51 AM
Bob Boyd said...: "So it climbed a 10 foot wall?

And it "escaped a dog"?

I'm trying to imagine that."

Just goes to show what you can do when properly motivated.; 4/20/18, 9:59 AM
Bob Boyd said...: The dog's lucky the beast didn't turn on him and rip him to shreds.; 4/20/18, 10:00 AM
Bob Boyd said...: All the kings horses and all the kings men...; 4/20/18, 10:02 AM
Bob Boyd said...: I forgot all the king's apostrophes.; 4/20/18, 10:03 AM
Fernandinande said...: Fox news headline says the repair cost $4,294,967,296.

Trumpit said...
You can't just feed them iceberg lettuce and be done with it.

True. I got a tortoise when I was a kid and it lived in my parents' back yard for 40-some years (then to a "rescue"); a (desert dwelling) vet said the most common problem for "pet" desert tortoises is over-eating. Their dogs never bothered it.

Before that and back east I'd caught (and released) a bunch of turtles (sliders and box turtles) but the coolest was a "Wood turtle", a beautiful semi-aquatic and apparently athletic turtle that climbed up the chicken-wire fence I'd made and escaped back into the woods.; 4/20/18, 10:09 AM
traditionalguy said...: We need a GoFund me account to be set up for Turtle Food. The beast will out live us all, and it has to eat.And while we are at it , we need to feed that damn dog.; 4/20/18, 10:11 AM
Michael K said...: I had a tortoise appear in my yard about ten years ago and I could not figure out how it got there. I had a basset hound who never bothered it. Then one day it was gone. They are probably good diggers. That one was about a foot and a half in diameter.

I agree this might have been an abuse of the tortoise.; 4/20/18, 10:14 AM
David said...: Next, the comfort turtle for nervous travelers.; 4/20/18, 10:26 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Old joke:

"An old rancher is talking about politics with a young man from the city. He compares a politician to a "post turtle". The young man doesn't understand and asks him what a post turtle is. The old man says, "When you're driving down a country road and you see a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle. You know he didn't get up there by himself. He doesn't belong there; you wonder who put him there; he can't get anything done while he's up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down.""; 4/20/18, 11:04 AM
Paul Zrimsek said...: Your title made me picture a tortoise with a cask of brandy slung under its neck, arriving to save the stranded climbers a couple of weeks after they've died of exposure.; 4/20/18, 11:15 AM
Anthony said...: I can think of far worse ways to spend that money.

Which they do, relentlessly.; 4/20/18, 11:33 AM
Etienne said...: When my cat needed expensive surgery, I took him behind the barn and BAM !

He has a nice tombstone.; 4/20/18, 12:54 PM
Trumpit said...: Years ago, a saw a video of large sea turtles being slaughtered in large numbers by Mexicans to make money. The poor animals were struggling to escape and just live. They were likely a threatened species. I oppose the hunting and trapping of wildlife for fun, profit, or allegedly for food. Get yourself a job, and go to McDonald's, or Wendy's.; 4/20/18, 2:00 PM
Narayanan said...: Hire it to test Trump border wall prototypes.; 4/21/18, 5:49 PM
Narayanan said...: Will moonbeam allow?; 4/21/18, 5:50 PM